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The End of a Chapter 



The End of a Chapter 



By 

Shane Leslie 

M. A. Cambridge 



New York 

Charles Scribner's Sons 

1916 



. L 



Copyright, 1916, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published April, 1916 




APR 13 



CI.A427662 



Preface 

It was while invalided in hospital during the Great 
War that I began to record notes and souvenirs of the 
times and institutions under which I had lived, realis- 
ing that I had witnessed the suicide of the civilisation 
called Christian and the travail of a new era to which 
no gods have been as yet rash enough to give their 
name, and remembering that, with my friends and con- 
temporaries, I shared the fortunes and misfortunes of 
being born at the end of a chapter in history. 

To the memory of those of them who have died be- 
fore the next chapter has begun I dedicate this book, 
and especially to that of my brother, Captain Norman 
Leslie, whom I buried at Annentieres in France, between 
the guns of two armies. 



Contents 



Links with the Past . 






3 


Eton College . 






26 


The Dynasty of Hanover 






47 


Cambridge University . 






67 


The Religion of England 






92 


The Politicians 






110 


Ireland and the Irish 






, 133 


An Empire of Sport and Freedom . 






, 151 


Society in Decay . 






, 171 


PoST-VlCTORIANISM 






187 


Epilogue , 






, 203 



The End of a Chapter 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 

People who are old enough to write memoirs 
have usually lost their memory. Fresh mem- 
ories have few memoirs. I have had to fall 
back upon the unpublished memoirs of others, 
having been born only half-way through the 
eighties. I was brought up at Glaslough, in 
the county of Monaghan, in Ireland, on the 
townland of Castle Lesly — such space upon 
God's earth as previous Leslies had been able 
to hold by purchase, forfeiture, or force of 
arms against "The MacKenna of Truagh." 
The Irish branch of the Leslies was founded 
by Bishop John Leslie, who kept his diocese 
of the Isles creditably clear of Cromwellians 
during the Civil War. In Ireland, as Bishop 
of Raphoe, he built a fort instead of a palace, 
and was known as "The Fighting Bishop." 
Before battle he used to invoke divine neu- 
trality on the plea that "though we are sin- 
ners, the enemy are not saints." He lived 
to be a centenarian, and at the Restoration 
rode from Chester to London a distance of one 
hundred and eighty miles to welcome the King. 



4 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

He was then in his ninetieth year. From this 
grim stuff sprang a race of theologian squires 
with an addiction to lost causes. They sup- 
ported the Stuarts and voted against the Union. 
One fled into exile rather than acknowledge 
William of Orange, and another refused a bribe 
rather than betray the Irish Parliament. It 
was a Leslie who took out a patent for the lost 
island of Atlantis or Brazil, which was last seen 
floating down Galway Bay. The family were 
perhaps lucky to have so much real land to 
restore to the original owners under the Land 
Purchase Acts. 

A great-grandson of "The Fighting Bishop" 
was Charles. He and the Duke of Welling- 
ton's father married sisters. Charles's grand- 
son is my grandfather, Sir John Leslie, who 
could claim last year, in the centenary of 
Waterloo, to be a surviving cousin of the vic- 
tor. To make the link with the past I asked 
him to sign my application to go to the Great 
War. 

Before I went, I spent some hours delving 
in his memory, which is very accurate con- 
cerning events before the Crimean War. Born 
in 1822, he has seen the whole Victorian era 
from its prelude to its aftermath. He has 
outlived almost all his contemporaries, and 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 5 

even seen their children die of old age. A 
third and a fourth generation he has seen go 
out to perish in the War of wars. 

The only thing he could remember of the 
old duke was being taken to see him as a 
schoolboy and getting no tip! Scores re- 
member the duke's funeral, but my grand- 
father is probably the only living person who 
has seen Talleyrand and heard the voice of 
Sir Walter Scott. 

He can remember five reigns. George IV 
he once saw looking through a window in his 
last days, and he heard the London newsboys 
cry his death. He was born while Pius VII 
(Napoleon's pope) was still alive and Monroe 
was President of the States. His father, born 
in 1769, was not able to distinguish between 
American citizens and Yankee rebels ! 

My grandfather saw Talleyrand on the 
steps of Hertford House when ambassador of 
France to St. James. Talleyrand had been 
a French bishop before the Revolution and 
subdeacon at the coronation of Louis XVI ! 
My grandfather was chiefly interested in the 
white-capped cooks whom that astute diplomat 
had introduced into London. Little did he 
dream that a granddaughter of his would one 
day marry the great-grandson of the Comte 



6 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

de Flahaut, Talleyrand's illegitimate son — 
(according to the Encyclopedia Britannica). 

As a boy travelling in a Scotland undefiled 
by railways he once listened to a kind old 
gentleman, who entered the coach at Edin- 
burgh and explained the antiquities as they 
passed. It was Sir Walter Scott in his anec- 
dotage. Sir Walter died in 1834, the year my 
grandfather went to Harrow School. It was 
in the stern old days of William IV, and he 
remembers vividly the week's journey from 
Glaslough to Harrow on the top of a coach 
without an overcoat! In October, 1834, he 
saw the old House of Parliament burning from 
the top of Harrow Hill. His house, Dr. Long- 
ley's, also suffered a fire, and he saw the future 
Archbishop of Canterbury, in a fit of economic 
panic, throw the contents of the boys' bed- 
rooms on the heads of those who were putting 
out the fire from below! He was taught to 
write Latin verses by "Harry" Drury, who 
had instilled a first notion of the poetic art into 
Byron forty years before. Dr. George Butler 
was then headmaster, whose son, the present 
Master of Trinity told me that Drury and 
Byron sat up one whole night discussing the 
immortality of the soul. With morning they 
parted — Drury to school and Byron to bathe. 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 7 

While a Harrow boy he subscribed to the 
first shilling parts of Pickwick Papers, by an 
unknown author. Unfortunately he threw 
them away when read. One day an old boy 
came down to the school dressed in a sporting 
check, the boys clustering round to hear his 
yarns. It was the future Cardinal Manning, 
whom my grandfather describes as the neatest 
rider in Rotten Row. Another day the poet 
Wordsworth came down to the school. 

At Oxford he went to Christ Church under 
Dean Gaisford who unkindly rusticated him 
for high spirits. He remembered the youth- 
ful Ruskin then at Christ Church being ragged 
by hearty Britons. Ruskin caused great 
amusement by bringing a portentous old 
mother with him to college, whom the young 
bloods considered "a holy horror." 

After playing cricket for Oxford against 
Cambridge in 1843, he went on the grand tour, 
riding through Spain with Mr. Hardinge, fa- 
ther of the Indian viceroy. Later he drove to 
Rome, through Italy, meeting Rossini and Mrs. 
Browning, and saw George Sand smoke — the 
first lady in Europe to do so. These were the 
picturesque days when the Pope still walked 
the streets, and the monsignori presided over 
the police and sewers. When he returned to 



8 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Rome forty years later both Pope and Tiber 
had been enclosed within stone walls to the 
great artistic loss of the city. 

He knew London in the forties, and heard 
men who are now legendary like Macaulay, 
Brougham, and Peel speak in Parliament. 
His Oxford tutor warned him not to attend 
Newman's Anglican sermons, and he recalls 
the timid little, ethereal, Jew-like doctor, 
whose secession later shook the church, 
moving through the lanes of Oxford. 

In those days Tom Moore and O'Connell 
played the parts of Yeats and Redmond in 
London to-day. Moore had hung up his rebel 
harp in the Whig salons of London when my 
grandfather met him, while O'Connell used 
to strut the streets modulating his small talk 
with the gestures of oratory. He could re- 
member Louis Philippe in Hyde Park, and 
Napoleon III he knew as a foreign adventurer 
prowling St. James Street for country-house 
invitations. The future Emperor was not 
considered a sportsman, and when he proposed 
to my grandmother's sister (Lady Fortescue) 
he was refused by Colonel Darner as a penniless 
Frenchman ! Darner had been on Cathcart's 
staff at Waterloo, and had a poor opinion of the 
Bonapartes ! My grandmother remembers the 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 9 

future Emperor staying at their home at Came 
in Dorset, and winning her over with half- 
crowns and barley-sugar, which he used to 
buy for her in Dorchester. Everybody thought 
Napoleon dull and fled him. When found 
wandering alone the dreamer remarked to one 
of the family: "II par ait que j'ennuie ces 
jeunes gens." He used to tell old Darner: 
" Vous me verrez un jour aux Tuileries." Darner 
doubtless shook his head, for like all soldiers 
of that time he had spent his life getting the 
uncle out of the Tuileries. As attache in Rus- 
sia he had witnessed the retreat from Moscow. 
So terrible were the scenes, when not only 
"General Fevrier" but the wolves fought for 
the Czar, that he would never mention them. 
When his daughter married Lord Fortescue, 
Napoleon III sent her a beautiful fan from 
the Tuileries which had belonged to his mother 
the Queen Hortense. 

A quaint memory of my grandfather was 
D'Orsay the last of the Dandies, whom he 
affected with the young bloods of the time. 
By his account D'Orsay was only an early 
Victorian Oscar Wilde living on his clothes 
and his notoriety. When D'Orsay died, he 
left him his most precious possession — his 
valet, whose wages he had omitted to pay 



10 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

for some years. The " gorgeous " Lady Bless- 
ington he recalled supported by two footmen, 
no less gorgeous, for crutches. 

In the world of sport he has seen wonderful 
changes. He was the last to use a muzzle- 
loader to shoot pheasants, and he often killed 
them at distances which modern guns did not 
reach. He has seen the rise and decline and 
final disappearance of modern first-class cricket. 
He is the doyen of the Marylebone Cricket 
Club, the hallowed ark of all English cricket. 
His membership dates from 1841. As a Har- 
row boy he saw his first Derby in Blooms- 
bury 's year, 1839 — the horse that " won the 
Derby and a lawsuit and broiled the Lords and 
the Commons"; and as a young officer he won 
the Grand Military Steeplechase on his own 
horse. The late Lord Harlech recorded how 
he appeared unattended and won as an out- 
sider by beautiful riding. 

In his youth prize-fighting was the na- 
tional sport, and "the champion of England" 
was, after the Archbishop of Canterbury, un- 
officially the second person in the realm. He 
watched the famous fight between Sayers and 
Heenan, which roused more real feeling be- 
tween England and America than the Ala- 
bama. To a degenerate generation he used 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 11 

to describe how Sayers faced his rival like a 
polo-pony against a dray-horse, and though his 
right arm was soon put out of action fought 
thirty rounds with his left until Heenan's 
face was a red mask. Unfortunately, Sayers's 
backers broke the ring rather than lose their 
money, and the fight was declared drawn. It 
was the climax and end of the old English 
boxing without gloves. Never again did dep- 
utations from both Houses attend a prize- 
fight. 

My grandfather had retired from the army 
before the outbreak of the Crimean War in 
order to devote himself to art. If he is not 
the oldest cavalry officer in England,* he is the 
last of the pre-Raphaelites. Holman Hunt, 
and Millais, whose profile resembled his, be- 
came his close friends. Landseer came to him 
for comfort as one of the few artists who ap- 
proved his lions in Trafalgar Square. It was 
to my grandmother that Watts wrote a deli- 
cate letter explaining that he married Ellen 
Terry — to save her from the dangers of the 
stage ! She was one of those present at that 

* Until the recent Zeppelin raids he was the only surviving soldier 
to have seen service in the streets of London. He rode out with 
the First Life Guards during the Chartist riots of 1848. Between 
the writing and printing of this chapter he has died. Requiescat in 
pace. (January 23, 1916.) 



12 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

dreamlike union between Art and Beauty — 
which was only to break like an iridescent 
bubble. When Watts died, a beautiful pic- 
ture of my grandmother in her youth was un- 
rolled from the lumber of his studio. 

The pre-Raphaelites formed a circle with 
Ruskin for their criticising genius. Unfor- 
tunately, Millais carried away Ruskin's wife 
after painting her picture. Mr. and Mrs. 
Millais afterward met Ruskin before they 
could turn and run. "Hold up your head 
high, Effie," said Millais, and poor Ruskin 
shuffled off the pavement. At times the best 
course is to simulate the attitude of the in- 
jured party. 

My grandfather went to Dusseldorf, and 
painted his first picture in the Black Forest — 
a study of children being shown a crucifix. 
As he was quite unknown it was a pleasant 
surprise to be placed on the line at the Royal 
Academy and to receive a flattering letter 
from the prince consort, to whom Germany 
and Christianity were the same. It was as 
sudden and unique a brilliance as winning the 
Grand Military without a backer. 

He succeeded his brother Charles to his 
Irish estates in 1871, and celebrated the event 
by defeating Isaac Butt, Parnell's predecessor 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 13 

in Irish leadership, at the Monaghan polls. 
A few years later he was himself defeated by 
Tim Healy, Parnell's secretary. It was the 
last stand the old gentry and grand juries made 
against the Nationalists. When I stood as a 
Nationalist nearly thirty years later I was ac- 
cused of giving my hand to a family foe. On 
the contrary, I found the Nationalist party 
then fighting Tim far more bitterly than we 
ever did. Tim is the greatest orator in the 
Empire according to Balfour, and he has all 
the Celtic gift and attraction for enmities. 
It is difficult not to think of him as an imp 
who has fallen into the holy water by mistake. 
It was lucky for the Church he was baptised 
a Catholic, for his tongue can say terrible 
things. When a minister was enumerating 
the power at the disposal of the crown against 
the Boers to the tune of "We've got the ships 
and the money, and we've got the men," he 
paused and asked what the Boers had — 
"God!" came a hiss — it is believed from Tim 
Healy. At any rate, the effect was electric. 

My grandfather witnessed an effective piece 
of play in the House during a duel between 
Disraeli and Gladstone. During a heated flight 
of oratory Gladstone upset some pens on the 
table between them. Disraeli rose and, after 



14 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

calling attention to the fact, slowly replaced 
them one by one. The effect of Gladstone's 
speech was lost by the time Disraeli finished. 

He had two brothers, Charles and Tom. 
Charles was a generous landlord, and once 
paid the election expenses of a ruined op- 
ponent. A monument was erected to him by 
"a grateful tenantry," but with some Irish 
humour the bill was sent in to the brother of 
the statuee to pay! Our relations with our 
tenantry have been so good that I may give 
a story of how we got even with them in re- 
cent years. We were exhibiting turnips at the 
Monaghan show, but of inferior growth, so 
our steward, to save the honour of the family, 
stole out at dead of night and removed the 
best turnips from an old tenant's farm ! With 
these we won handsomely, but — the truth 
being told — were disqualified. 

I should add that when the rents were re- 
duced by the Land Commission, a number of 
tenants refused to go into court out of re- 
spect for my grandfather. Only in Ireland 
could such loyalty exist. 

Charles Leslie accompanied Lord Hartington, 
afterward Duke of Devonshire, on a trip to the 
American Civil War. They passed through 
the lines of both armies, visiting Richmond 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 15 

and the White House. Unfortunately, Hart- 
ington appeared at a New York ball with a 
Southern favour given him by the mother of 
a future English duchess. They were lucky to 
return alive. 

Charles Leslie was interested to find that 
Archbishop Hughes of New York had been 
born on his estate — amid the snipe bogs of 
Annaloghlan. Hughes was perhaps the great- 
est Irishman of his century, with all the talents 
and none of the defects of his race. If he suf- 
fered, like Lincoln, from "education defective, " 
he was as great in argument or administration. 
At Lincoln's request he went and persuaded 
Napoleon III not to recognise the South dur- 
ing the Civil War. He was a Moses to the 
Irish race, for he established Catholic citizen- 
ship in a Promised Land. The body of this 
great and simple man lies under the Gothic 
Cathedral he planted on Fifth Avenue. 

My grandfather's other brother, Tom Leslie, 
was wounded in the Crimea by a Russian 
bullet, which the commander-in-chief sent 
home to his mother. He was on Lord Rag- 
lan's staff, and it was to him the order re- 
sulting in the Charge of Balaclava was first 
given. He told me nearly fifty years later 
that he was about to take the order which 
ran — "Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to 



16 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

advance rapidly to the front, and try to pre- 
vent the enemy carrying away the guns." 

But a popular young officer, Captain Nolan, 
asked for the honour and galloped off with 
the message to Lord Lucan, leaving Tom to 
curse what is known in the family as "Leslie 
Luck." 

Raglan wished some Turkish guns taken 
by the Russians to be saved, but Lucan could 
not see them and questioned Nolan, who, 
being a hot Celt, pointed toward the Rus- 
sian guns at the end of the valley and asked 
if he were afraid. Lucan repeated the blunder 
to Lord Cardigan, a duelling rake, who in- 
stantly led the famous charge. As they swept 
toward the jaws of death, a headless horse- 
man crossed their track and fell. It was 
Nolan, who had probably ridden back to cor- 
rect his mistake but was the first to be killed 
by the fatal guns. "Some one had blundered." 
At any rate, it was not a Leslie. 

In 1856 my grandfather married Constance, 
daughter of "Minny" Seymour, the adopted 
daughter of Mrs. Fitzherbert, the wife of 
George IV. With the permission of Edward 
VII, and some aid from my grandmother, 
Mr. Wilkins has written two volumes on that 
royal romance. 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 17 

George IV actually married Mrs. Fitzher- 
bert in the presence of her brother and uncle 
when Prince of Wales. It was of her some 
poet wrote when she lived at Richmond: 

"I would crowns resign to call her mine, 
Sweet lass of Richmond Hill." 

The trouble was that Mrs. Fitzherbert was 
a devout Catholic, and insisted on a legal 
wedding, which was afterward denied by 
Fox in the House. Mrs. Fitzherbert never 
used her position for personal ends. What- 
ever influence in the prince's life was good 
came from her. Whatever unhappiness en- 
tered hers came from him. Even after he 
slighted her and married an official queen, 
she was willing to return to him with the per- 
mission of the Pope, in whose eyes her mar- 
riage remained legal and binding. Her gentle 
piety and dauntless wifehood endeared her to 
the whole royal family, and William IV gave 
her leave to wear widow's weeds for George 
IV, who was buried with her miniature round 
his neck. She refused the title of duchess as 
savouring of the rank of a royal courtesan, 
but her servants wore the royal livery. 

After the King's death the Duke of Wel- 
lington induced her to burn all the papers in 



18 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

her possession except the certificate of the 
marriage, a letter, and the will of the King, a 
letter by the officiating minister, and a note 
written by Mrs. Fitzherbert attached to it, 
which were placed in Coutt's Bank. King 
Edward VII gave permission to Wilkins to 
publish what was needed to prove the mar- 
riage when the box was opened, more than 
seventy years later. The papers were then 
removed to the Windsor Archives. They 
were not published in full or perhaps the 
mystery of Mrs. Fitzherbert's children might 
have been cleared. 

It is said that she bore the prince children, 
but as they were born sacramentally her own 
family had naught to conceal. The unproven 
tradition among her Catholic relatives was 
that she had children, and that one of them 
was at one time designed to marry the re- 
stored Bourbon King of France. The follow- 
ing exists in Mrs. Fitzherbert's handwriting: 

I, Mary Fitzherbert desire my executors to employ the will 
signed by George P of W's in support of my character with 
Posterity, but I do not ask to found upon it, any pecuniary 
claims on the personalty of His late Majesty, George the 
4th so witness my hand. 

this day of 1836. 

I, Mary Fitzherbert, moreover testify that my union with 
George P. of Wales was without issue. 
Witness 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 19 

This is obviously a rough copy and, being 
unsigned, leaves the mystery a mystery. 

Though there have been American pre- 
tenders to be descended from George IV and 
Mrs. Fitzherbert, she left her personalty to 
her adopted daughter "Minny" Seymour and 
her favourite niece Marianne Smythe. It has 
been supposed they were her children. 
"Minny" (Mary Georgiana) Seymour was 
my great-grandmother, daughter of Lord 
Hugh and Lady Horatia Seymour. If she 
had been Mrs. Fitzherbert's daughter, Mrs. 
Fitzherbert would never have promised to 
bring her up Protestant. Marianne Smythe, 
however, married into the Catholic Jerning- 
hams. Difficulties pursued Mrs. Fitzherbert. 
Lord Hugh Seymour died, mentioning all his 
children except "Minny" (Mary) Seymour. 
The Seymours wished to remove the child 
from Mrs. Fitzherbert. The "Seymour Case" 
followed, in which the Prince of Wales sup- 
ported Mrs. Fitzherbert's claim to the child 
and even canvassed the peers on her behalf. 
In the end Lord Hertford, the head of the 
Seymours, committed her to Mrs. Fitzherbert's 
care. The prince made a great pet of her, and 
her letters to him (addressed to "dear Prinny ") 
are extant in the Windsor Archives. During 



20 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

the "Seymour Case" the prince said in his 
affidavit that he was under a dying request 
from Lady Horatia Seymour — "to be the 
father and protector through life of this dear 
child." 

The prince certainly kept his promise. When 
the girl was pressed by her family to marry 
Lord Francis Egerton, at a time that her heart 
was set on Colonel Darner, she appealed to 
"Prinny" who had become George IV. In 
her letter she begged the protection of one 
"toward whom from my peculiar position I 
am more bound than any other human being." 
And she continued: "Your Majesty's great 
goodness and parental conduct which com- 
menced with my earliest years, and has been 
graciously extended to me to this present 
moment, only increases the pain and embar- 
rassment I feel, etc." (July 13, 1825.) 

In the end she was allowed to marry Colonel 
Darner. Though the King treated her with a 
parent's love it seems impossible for her to 
have been Mrs. Fitzherbert's child. Whether 
Mrs. Fitzherbert had children or not must 
remain undecided until two pages which have 
been cut from the Catholic baptismal at 
Brighton are restored. The pages under 1800 
and 1803 have been removed. After 1803 Mrs. 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 21 

Fitzherbert left the prince. The mystery, if 
there is one, is undoubtedly contained in the 
Windsor Archives, for General Kelly-Kenny, a 
close friend of Edward VII, told me that Lord 
Knollys removed papers to Windsor which 
Wilkins was not allowed to use when the 
famous box was opened at Coutt's. 

Mrs. Fitzherbert left her pearls to Marianne 
Smythe, and her other relics to "Minny" 
Darner, who divided them among her daughters 
— the portrait by Romney and the King's 
miniature to Lady Fortescue, the locket with 
the King's hair and the bracelet to Lady Con- 
stance Leslie, her pictures and Mrs. Fitz- 
herbert's rosary to Lady Blanche Heygarth. 

The latter has described to me being taken 
to Mrs. Fitzherbert's dying chamber in Tilney 
Street. She recognised the litanies which 
were chanted on that occasion on reading 
Newman's Dream of Gerontius afterward. 
Together with my grandmother she erected 
the monument to Mrs. Fitzherbert in the 
Catholic church at Brighton. On her hand 
were chiselled the wedding-rings of her two 
Catholic husbands, and finally the fatal circlet 
which united her to "the First Gentleman" 
and the uttermost cad in Europe. 

By accidental irony, on the wall above her 



22 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

tomb is the stray lettering— Sancte Georgi, 
or a pro nobis (St. George, pray for us). It 
were more fitting that an Ave Maria were in- 
scribed on the coffin of a King, whose sole 
claim to grace is that he was the husband of 
Maria Fitzherbert! 

My grandmother remembers Colonel Darner 
taking her to Brussels after the coup d'etat 
of 1851, and hearing Thiers abuse "le coquin" 
as he called Napoleon. She has many memories 
of the Vanity Fair of Thackeray's time. Cu- 
riously enough, it was her relative, Lord Hert- 
ford, whom he pilloried as the wicked Marquis 
of Steyne in Vanity Fair, and even sketched 
from life in the suppressed plate of the first 
edition. Thackeray was due to dine at her 
house the night before he died, and his last 
letter was written to refuse. In the exquisite 
minuscules with which he wrote to friends he 
sent word: 

Saturday 
Dear Mrs. Leslie: 

Since I wrote and said yes, I have been in bed 2 days and 
fate and the Doctor say No. Indeed I am unfit to come (I 
have only this minute crawled down to my sofa) and no- 
body can be more sorry than 

Yours very faithfully, 

W. M. Thackeray. 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 23 

This was written on December 22, 1863, 
and the writer died two days later. Years 
afterward his daughter saw the letter and 
said it must have been the last time he ever 
wrote.* 

Thackeray and Dickens used to be on bad 
terms. My grandmother recalls the ludicrous 
incident which brought them together. As 
they both left the Athenaeum, unknown to 
each other, they seized the same hat. The 
effect was ludicrous enough to appeal even to 
professional humourists and they shook hands. 

Her strangest lint with the past was being 
taken to see Miss Berry then ninety years of 
age, to whom Horace Walpole had proposed 
marriage. Miss Berry was the anonymous 
figurehead of Thackeray's Four Georges when 
he wrote: 

m 

A very few years since I knew familiarly a lady who had 
been asked in marriage by Horace Walpole, who had been 
patted on the head by George I. This lady had knocked at 
Doctor Johnson's door; had been intimate with Fox. I often 
thought as I took my kind old friend's hand, how with it I 
held on to the old Society of wits and men of the world. 

Perhaps my grandmother is now the only 
living person to have touched a hand that 

* She wrote in 1901 : " I could have cried over the letter of my 
father. It was quite strongly and well written. Who could have 
thought that dear pen was to be laid aside for ever ? " 



24 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

knocked on Johnson's door. She has seen 
the evolution of society from the crinoline to 
the tango, from the time when it was a close 
club to the latter days when it resembled a 
mob. Joachim and Rubinstein had played 
in her house in early days. In the fifties she 
heard Mrs. Kemble sing one of his poems to 
Tennyson, with Rossetti, Burne- Jones, and 
Doyle for audience. Landseer used to mimic 
"The Dook," as Wellington was called, in her 
salon. In those days gold was pronounced 
"gould" and china "cheney." She noted 1860 
as about the year that Christmas cards super- 
seded valentines. She attended the last ball 
given by Palmerston,* and saw him weeping 
for the Prince Consort — the only time tears 
were recorded of "Pam." Though innocent of 
any sporting proclivity, she was loyal enough 
to dream that Edward VII's Persimmon would 
win the Derby, and on the strength of her 
dream wagered five pounds successfully in the 
cause of charity. 

When Lady Cardigan's grim memoirs of the 
English aristocracy were published, she bought 
up and burned the remainder of the first edition. 

*I may add a last memory from her note-book: "Countess Cas- 
tiglione's appearance at Lady Palmerston's 28 June, 1862, gloriously 
beautiful — quite mobbed — and all the English beauties paled before 
her." Ou sont les neiges d'antan ? 



LINKS WITH THE PAST 25 

It was her auto-da-fe in defence of many friends 
who could no longer defend themselves — an 
act which befitted her as one of the surviving 
links with a time and a regime which is now 
engulfed for ever. 



ETON COLLEGE 

The English public school and the national 
character lie at each other's roots. The Eng- 
lish school has played as great a part as the 
German schoolmaster within the Empire that 
it has helped to build. Sedan was the victory 
of the latter, in the way that Wellington said 
Waterloo was won in the playing-fields of 
Eton. 

In America and England the public school 
is different. The American institution im- 
poses a free education on the children of 
citizens. In England only the parents of a 
certain caste or fortune can afford to send 
their boys to a public school. The school of 
the poor is "the board-school," but its pupils 
may not call themselves public-school men 
in after life. That is the proud distinction 
of those who have been to Eton, Harrow, 
Winchester, Westminster, and Rugby — the 
planets of the system — or to one of the fifty 
subsidiary schools that follow in their wake. 
The public-school system is traditional and 

26 



ETON COLLEGE 27 

caste-making. The men from the public 
schools form the distinctive class between the 
hereditary gentry and the mob. They are 
the bulwark of the professions and of the 
services. In peace time they maintain the 
customs and practice of sport. But the Great 
War has put their system on trial. The new 
armies are largely officered by public-school 
men. 

My school experience was the same as that 
of a generation born in the eighties and nine- 
ties, who were therefore of cannonable age 
at the outbreak of the war. Even if my con- 
temporaries had not been for the most part 
cut down in their flower, we should have all 
agreed that school-time was the best phase of 
life. In memory of man English schools, 
private or public, were hotbeds of cruelty. 
Dickens helped to abolish Dotheboys Hall 
with a pen more stinging than the cane of 
Squeers, whose model in life was actually 
commemorated by a church window. At Har- 
row in the thirties my grandfather was bullied 
and even roasted at a fire by his fagmaster. 
At Eton and Rugby the customs were just 
as brutal. Mere children were tossed in 
blankets or thrashed by other boys for ig- 
norance of the school slang. 



28 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

In later Victorian days schools became as 
pleasant to the boys as expensive to the 
parents. Luxury and sport were developed. 
Bullying declined to favouritism. Boys came 
to love their schools with a religious passion. 

I went to Ludgrove, one of a score of private 
schools preparing for Eton. It was under 
Arthur Dunn, captain of the English Eleven. 
He was assisted by a staff of gentlemen ath- 
letes, who posed for the illustrations in the 
Badmington Booh of Football. There was no 
suspicion of pedagogue among them, and they 
became the objects of our sincere hero-worship. 
They included "Joe" Smith, another of Eng- 
land's captains, who saved Oxford from de- 
feat in the most famous of cricket encounters 
with Cambridge. Another was H. P. Hansell, 
whose courtly mien and polished French have 
been since devoted to tutoring England's 
next King. He was a connoisseur in China 
and a man of delicate taste, liable to be dis- 
turbed with sad wrath when a boy wrote God 
without a capital G. He has become a well- 
known character in the public eye accompany- 
ing the Prince of Wales on all occasions, even 
to Paris, where the irrepressible Parisians re- 
marked that there was "more Hansel than 
Gretel" permitted in the prince's company. 



ETON COLLEGE 29 

Arthur Dunn taught us to play football as 
honourably as the game of life, to recite the 
Kings of Judah and Israel, to love God and 
to hate Harrow. He died in his prime as the 
result of football strain — a bright and lovable 
memory, touching "muscular Christianity" at 
its highest. Yet most of his boys were doomed 
to die younger than he. To have been a school- 
boy in the nineties was to become fodder for 
the war flames of the next century. 

On Ascension Day, 1898, the school flag was 
solemnly lowered. Mr. Gladstone was dead, 
and a solemn hush overspread the school, 
though some of us, scions of the landed class, 
felt that the devil had taken his due. It 
marked as well as any date the end of the 
Victorian era of which jubilees were the climax. 
Henceforth the Empire, glutted with a seventh 
of the globe, was to experience difficulty and 
even the symptoms of disaster. The follow- 
ing year brought the Boer War, in which loss 
of fame was ill concealed in farce. By the 
time the tears, recriminations, and laughter 
aroused by the war were finished, Queen Vic- 
toria and the century associated with her 
name had passed to the historians. 

Meanwhile, with the aid of a little Latin 
and less Greek, I was making my way through 



30 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Eton, greatest if no longer the most select 
of the public schools. Eton is a traditional 
republic of a thousand boys divided into 
fifteen houses, each enjoying separate govern- 
ment but federated for purposes of sport and 
study not unlike the United States of Amer- 
ica. The school is ruled by a society of ath- 
letes drawn from all the houses, who stand in 
relation to the Headmaster as the Senate of 
the United States stands to the President. 
The Head is chosen not by the votes of the 
school, but by a governing body. However, 
as an inclination to democracy he cannot use 
the birch until it is presented to him formally 
by the boys themselves. 

In the matter of education, Eton does not 
educate so much as initiate. She takes no 
pride in conferring a sound commercial train- 
ing. Only one of my contemporaries has since 
"made his fortune," which he did while still 
in his teens by making an early corner in pic- 
ture post-cards to the mild amazement of his 
instructors. Eton invests boys with a social 
stamp entitling them to enter the freemasonry 
of English gentlemen. Of this much-envied 
and much-decried society there are roughly 
three ascending degrees recognised unofficially 
throughout the Empire. . 



ETON COLLEGE 31 

1. "Sportsmen." 

2. Sportsmen who have been at Oxford and 
Cambridge. 

3. Old Etonians. 

I fear that old Etonians have tended to 
seclude themselves in a caste by themselves. 
It is the defect of a social quality. It is Eton's 
pride that she produces men and not "mugs," 
guiding statesmen and not pushful politicians, 
viceroys and not commercial nabobs, and on 
a lower scale after-dinner speakers rather than 
orators, hunting parsons rather than mystic 
theologians. Nevertheless, she reared Pusey, 
the chief theologian of the age, and Labou- 
chere, a pure wire-puller. Her training be- 
fits a future chancellor better than the bank 
clerk in posse. The Etonian prefers graceful 
dignity to intellectual study. It was typical 
for a most brilliant son, Randolph Churchill, 
to refer to decimal points, when Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, as "those damned dots!" 
Not unlike Castlereagh, who is said to have 
given up Java because he could not find it 
on the map. The exact sciences have never 
appealed to English gentlemen. They have 
left clerkship and surveying, like sanitation, 
to the middle classes. It is a pity that the 
public schools do not produce the scientific 



32 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

or efficient spirit. It accounts for German suc- 
cesses in commerce and in war. 

There is no modern side at Eton. Modern 
languages are a side-show. Science, irreverently 
called "stinks," is taught rather like the ac- 
complishment of drawing-room conjuring. The 
main studies are Latin and Greek, which 
have lost their public value since the classics 
are no longer quoted in Parliament. Boys 
are served with daily rations of Latin and 
Greek that are seldom absorbed with pleasure 
or profit. Every week claims a copy of Latin 
verses, which to the ordinary boy is a mad- 
dening exercise in Chinese puzzledom. Only 
a few reach the standard which would enable 
them to write Latin epitaphs for Westminster 
Abbey without disturbing Poets' Corner with 
a false quantity. 

The only English poetry we learned was in 
the guise of Latin exercises. My acquaintance 
with the Celtic School dates from a feverish 
night turning Yeats into Latin elegiacs. To 
clothe lines like — 

'* My brother is priest in Kilvarnet, 
My cousin in Maharabuie " 

with Ovidian measure is like Dr. Haig Brown's 
tour de force in putting Euclid (Prop. I) into 
Latin verse! 



ETON COLLEGE 33 

The classical curriculum produced the re- 
fined scholarship and literary taste which 
were so much acclaimed in the eighteenth 
century. The art of apt quotation had a 
public value, and Etonians led the way in 
applying Horace and Virgil to modern contin- 
gencies. Ever memorable at Eton was the 
reply of a master who had been skating on a 
flooded field (we called Philippi) in the words 
of Horace, "Philippis versa acies retro," which 
can be exactly rendered: "Turning the out- 
side edge at Philippi" ! As brilliant was the 
flash in which some one discovered the Greek 
for "muscular Christianity" in Thucydides — 
Philosophoumen aneu malahias (We are lovers 
of wisdom without softness). 

Apt turns to Scripture were equally ap- 
plauded. When a boy accused a master of 
needing a crib himself, another quoted from 
Proverbs: "The ass knoweth his master's crib." 
It was a tradition that "Judy" Durnford, 
when Lower Master, found a button in the 
chapel collection, which he read out in terms 
of pounds, shillings, and pence, "and one 
trouser-button ! " proceeding immediately with 
the words of the service — "Rend your hearts 
and not your garments !" 

It is bad taste at Eton to assume aught but 



34 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

a bored indifference to school work. Enthu- 
siasm is reserved for games. To be too clever 
or intellectual is resented as un-English. The 
quality which is most encouraged and re- 
warded in Germany is repressed in English 
schools by unwritten laws among the boys 
themselves. About one boy in ten works his 
hardest, and he is nicknamed "a sap," since 
it is folly to be wise. Unless he is also athletic 
he tends to become a social outcast. In my 
father's generation at Eton it was said that 
only two boys other than the annuity-receiving 
scholars worked hard. They were George 
Curzon and St. John Brodrick, who as Indian 
Viceroy and Minister of War have well il- 
lustrated the types of Eton genius and Eton 
plodder in their respective careers. Their 
quarrel over Indian administration is historic. 
Both were "saps," but Curzon had some of 
the "heaven-sent" and "all-highest" quality 
which distinguishes the Kaiser. 

No English school can teach French as well 
as Latin. It is doubtful which teaches less, 
the French teacher who mispronounces Eng- 
lish or the Englishman who talks bad French. 
All Frenchmen are "ragged" on a national 
principle at English schools. At Eton any 
new master is liable to traps. In my time one, 



ETON COLLEGE 35 

a non-Etonian, was informed by his class that 
by old custom popular masters were hoisted 
round their classrooms. On hearing that the 
vote of popularity had fallen on him, he suf- 
fered himself to be carried about by the boys 
in triumph during school hours. Unfortunately, 
he mentioned his success to an older colleague 
and his career was closed. Boys are cruel. 

I was present on a famous 5th of November 
when a gentle teacher of Mathematics was 
"ragged" by the class, who appeared in masks 
and played football. Suddenly the door opened 
and Dr. Warre, the majestic Headmaster, en- 
tered. Without a word he proceeded to ex- 
amine our books, where the diagrams illus- 
trated Natural History oftener than Geometry. 
A ludicrous incident occurred. One of the 
boys was quite unable to remove the mask 
from his face. With restrained anger Dr. 
Warre inquired his name. It was world- 
famous! The Head drew himself up in his 
robes, and sadly said in tones as of a Pope 
excommunicating one of his own family: 

" A great old Eton name." 
Then he left the room, but the effect was 
annihilating. Edmond Warre was one of the 
greatest of Eton Headmasters — a Grecian and 
an oarsman, he epitomised English culture. 



36 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

His brow was Olympian, and he carried the 
shoulders of a prize-fighter. Out of his mouth 
proceeded praises and punishments with a 
sound of innocuous thunder. In class he 
often uttered platitudes as impressively as 
though they came from a judge of the living 
and the dead. 

Every morning as he passed into chapel be- 
hind the solemn file of his sixth form per- 
forming their traditional goose-step to the 
notes of the organ, the school rose to salute 
him. The light from the east window threw 
a sightless expression upon his spectacles, 
always reminding me of GEdipus stepping 
onto the Greek stage behind the rhythmic 
marching chorus. He was a grand old man, 
and worthy to flog the future bishops and 
statesmen of England. I do not know how 
many hundreds of Eton boys slain in the 
battles of the Empire will not rise to do him 
reverence among the dead. The Headmaster 
of Eton has more to do with the soul of Eng- 
land than the Primate of Canterbury. The 
feeling of Etonians to Eton is more akin to 
religion than most sentiments in the English 
breast. The cry of Floreat Etona I is the Ave 
Maria of the devotion of all who have been 
there. 



ETON COLLEGE 37 

In his old age Warre attempted reform. 
He tried to improve our handwriting, which 
was crabbed by the system of writing lines 
for punishment, and he issued edicts on be- 
half of French. Classical Masters were bid- 
den to teach it for an hour weekly (but as 
a dead language, like Latin). There was an 
underground conflict among the Masters be- 
tween the modern men and the traditionalists 
at this time, in which the latter saved the old 
curriculum as piously as iEneas saved the 
Palladium from Troy. While the boys slept 
the conflict raged. Some of the older men 
were as quaint as characters in Dickens. The 
nicknames and legends attached to them have 
been carried to the farthest outposts of Em- 
pire. One of these on his retirement was 
presented by his boys with a grand piano in 
testimony of being "the slackest Master in 
the school." "M' Tutor" is as great an in- 
stitution as "M' Dame" at Eton. A boy's 
tutor performed a consul's role in helping and 
protecting his pupils when in trouble in other 
classrooms. The Eton Dame is now extinct. 
She was a relic of matriarchy, and equally 
sacred and primitive. These gifted old ladies 
who kept the Eton houses fostered half the 
heroes and adventurers of Empire. Sargent's 



38 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

brush has luckily preserved the features of the 
last of them — old Jane Evans, who lived to 
see one of her charges Headmaster. For sixty 
years she had been at Eton, and her boys had 
filled her dining-hall with trophies from all 
lands. She told me she had once carried up- 
stairs a boy of five who was sent to the Eton 
world in petticoats ! She remembered great 
men only as boys in Eton jackets. Her keen, 
humorous eyes had taken in generations of 
them, and in old age they carried in con- 
sequence a look of eternal youth. To Eto- 
nians she was the second lady in the land. 

Eton taught little Theology, moral or dog- 
matic. Decency and reverence were instilled 
instead. Boys brought their home creed with 
them and, perhaps, returned with its frag- 
ments. In morals, Etonians have the English- 
man's right to take their own line, provided 
they do not become prigs on the one hand or 
beasts on the other. Athletics purify their 
life. 

Religious services were choral — a daily 
draught of song and chant which Etonians 
take as a memory into life's dryer places. 
The Sunday sermon was a mild appeal to take 
holy orders or grow up like Lord Roberts. 
Preachers were advised not to refer to the 



ETON COLLEGE 39 

seventh commandment or to Wellington's his- 
toric remark about Waterloo and the playing- 
fields. In the latter case he was liable to raise 
Homeric applause. On Sunday boys were 
made to write answers to scriptural questions, 
a hateful tribute to the Sabaoth God which 
made Sunday the chosen day for smoking or 
catapulting the royal rabbits in Windsor. 
True worship was given to athletic prowess 
and physical beauty. But immorality was 
rare. If twice in a generation a house had 
been cleaned out, the inmates were rowdies 
more than decadents. In one case the boys 
solemnly hoisted a black flag as each of their 
number departed. Love of athletics made boys 
more Greek than Christian in their ideals. 
Only the Jesuits have ever been able to impose 
the supernatural on English boys. Their ideal 
is St. Aloysius, a delicate youth with a lily. 
The popular Etonian inclines to a tomboy 
with a cricket-bat. Aloysius would have been 
better for games and Etonians for the sac- 
ramental view of life. The ideal would be a 
combination of the two. The Reformation, 
while it made, also limited, English institu- 
tions. 

The captain of Beaumont "the Jesuit Eton" 
was said to have sent a football challenge to 



40 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Eton. Eton contemns other schools just as 
England despises the rest of the world, and 
the Eton captain answered: "What is Beau- 
mont?" The reply was superb: "Beaumont 
is what Eton was — a school for Catholic 
gentlemen!" 

The Eton school chorus expresses the senti- 
ment felt toward others. 

"Harrow may be more clever, 
Rugby may make more row, 
But nothing in life shall sever 
The bond that is round us now." 

The feud between Eton and Harrow is im- 
placable and inexplicable. My grandfather 
was cut by all his Harrow friends for sending 
his boy to Eton. Riots used to follow the 
cricket contest. I believe it represents the 
last trace of the war between Roundhead and 
Cavalier. On June 4 of 1915, Eton officers 
in the trenches telegraphed "Gott strafe Har- 
row!" 

To substitute Germany for Harrow and the 
United States for Rugby would give a fair 
idea of the adult Etonian's outlook. Etonians 
imbibe a certain sense of the effortless supe- 
riority which haunts every imperial race. To be 
an Etonian seems better than to become great 



ETON COLLEGE 41 

or successful. Boys are lulled into a sense of 
unassailable primacy which they extend later 
to the Empire. We tasted a divine but care- 
less flower, as though the lilies on the Eton 
shield were a kind of lotus. No Eton captain 
can ever be so great again as he was at school. 
Miss Evans used to say that Etonians tended to 
become great men or black sheep. Arthur Ben- 
son found the Eton boy an insoluble mixture 
— "Now an angel, now a demon." When Ben- 
son was an Eton Master I spent two halves in 
his class. He seemed to be equally puzzled 
and saddened by the boisterous boy life about 
him. He feebly despised their games as they 
not unfeebly despised his poetry ! Though an 
English poet, the system compelled him to 
teach us to write verses in dead languages. 
He used to sit above us like some literary 
Prometheus with his big, bushy head bowed 
to his desk by the system which prevented 
him communicating to us his gift of divine 
fire. He left Eton to edit Queen Victoria's 
letters. I have wondered whether he found 
the Queen's English or our schoolboy Latin 
the more tedious. 

It was hoped he would succeed Warre as 
Head, but the traditionalists opposed him, 
and a compromise was found in Edward 



42 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Lyttelton, who as a cricketer and a vegetarian 
was expected to satisfy the conservative as 
well as the advanced men. 

Eton punishments were as prehistoric as the 
pillory. Youths of an age that would be 
salaried and married in America were liable 
to be solemnly held down on a wooden block 
by two assistants and minutely perforated 
with a birch rod, which figured for seven and 
sixpence in the bill. Mr. Leigh, the Lower 
Master, was humorously called "The Flea," 
because he generally drew blood on these 
occasions. Only the blood royal was exempt, 
but Leigh used to make the Duke of Albany 
sit on the block instead. The greatest achieve- 
ment of the Beresfords was stealing the Eton 
block, which for years was kept at their seat 
at Curraghmore. 

The captains used canes at their own plea- 
sure. I remember peers' sons being caned in a 
way that would have entailed lawsuits in a 
board-school. Only the convict and the chil- 
dren of the rich have the privilege of being 
flogged in England. The small boys are liable 
to menial service. Queen Victoria gave orders 
for her grandsons to be "fagged" according to 
custom. In my time the fags included an 
Astor and a Drexel, for family names do not 



ETON COLLEGE 43 

impress Eton. Eton might have inquired as 
innocently as King Edward of a shocked Phil- 
adelphian: "What is a Biddle?" 

One young nobleman's son introduced him- 
self as Lord C , son of Earl C . The 

whole house promptly kicked him twice, once 

for Lord C and once for Earl C . This 

story is capped from Harrow, where a for- 
eign prince at the school was once mentioned 
as a candidate for the Spanish throne. The 
poor boy had to be removed, as half the school 
took the necessary steps to be able to boast 
afterward that they had kicked a King of 
Spain ! 

The athlete was the only king in the public- 
school democracy. The prizes of youth went 
to the strong. Woe to the weak and the lag- 
gard ! Power and popularity greeted the 
rower, the runner, and the cricketer. Curiously 
enough, military proficiency was rated low. A 
boy who shot for the school at Bisley was an 
inferior being to one who rowed at Henley or 
batted at Lord's. The school volunteers were 
called "bug-shooters" in facetious allusion to 
their manoeuvres in country lanes. This pref- 
erence is responsible for the preponderance 
of bravery over strategy in Eton soldiers. 
Courage to die is still admired more than the 



44 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

cunning which entraps a foe. But the end of 
all Samurai is extinction. 

It was noteworthy that a Japanese visitor 
asked only how "the spirit of Eton" was 
taught. It was the spirit not letters we learned. 

The Etonian enters the world with a work- 
ing code of honour and a knowledge of gentle- 
manly conduct in the rough and tumble of life. 
What he desires of art or music or literature 
he must glean surreptitiously for himself. It 
is sad to think of Shelley at Eton flying from 
his pursuers like a baby owl mobbed by star- 
lings in daylight. 

Eton is a great Aryan as well as English 
institution. Reform would only complete the 
decay which has been caused by the admission 
of the sons of Orientals, financial magnates, 
snobs, and swindlers. The sturdy squirarchy 
who compose the bulk of the Eton families 
have been swamped. One house has been 
recently known as "the Synagogue." Win- 
chester, the sister school, has taken the pre- 
caution of excluding non-Christians. Eton, 
in a generous effort to keep pace with the Em- 
pire, has become as cosmopolitan as English 
society. 

Eton has enjoyed almost a monopoly, how- 
ever, in men of state and imperial distinction— 



ETON COLLEGE 45 

apart from men of genius, which is ambulator/ 
like the Spirit, and not necessarily aristocratic. 

The Etonian is the most marked among the 
types that spring out of the public school. 
His is the caste composed of ruling and ad- 
venturous, half -educated but honourable men. 
All professions accept his leadership except 
journalism and stock- jobbing, which as sub- 
sidiary to literature and commerce are largely 
left to Celts and Jews. In other professions 
he makes a brilliant mark, even in art and 
politics, the two professions giving the out- 
sider a chance to reach the topmost level of 
society. Men who are not public-school men 
can succeed by making themselves idols in 
politics or smashing idols in art — a Disraeli 
or a Bernard Shaw. 

Eton has naturally produced more poets 
than painters, more diplomatists than dem- 
agogues — but there are few Tory cabinets out 
of which she cannot man a rowing eight ! 

The war has tested Eton to the core, and 
proven that "Etonesse oblige." In an aristo- 
cratic war like the Boer War 129 Etonians 
were killed out of the 1,400 who fought. In 
the first year of Europe's war 368 fell out of 
2,558. One of two prints hangs in every Eto- 
nian's room, the "Sir Galahad," which Watts 



46 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

limned for the school chapel, or Lady Butler's 
picture of an Eton officer charging deathward 
to the cry of "Floreat Etona!" They signify 
one the spiritual and the other the carnal war- 
fare, though perhaps a strife has come in which 
they seem synonymous. 



THE DYNASTY OF HANOVER 

To the English their dynasty is an institution 
on a par with the Church or the Bank of Eng- 
land — consecrated by the one, paid for through 
the other. But to Eton, the owner of Windsor 
Castle is a neighbour. Eton herself is royal 
and her chapel, like the amphibious Berwick- 
on-Tweed (which is neither English nor Scotch), 
needs special mention in the state prayer-book. 
Harrow was founded by a yeoman, Winchester 
by a bishop, but Eton by King Henry VI. 
Eton's feast is the 4th of June — the birthday 
of the simple-souled George III, who had an 
affection for Eton. To this day every Eton 
boy, even of American blood, wears a mourn- 
ing-band round his hat in his honour, just as 
bluejackets still wear black scarfs for Nelson. 
The dynasty of Hanover was German, and 
the Teutonic guttural never left the throats of 
their descendants. For constitutional or im- 
perial purposes the dynasty proved admirable. 
Yet, both George I and George II were aliens, 
who had achieved nothing besides making 
Hanover "a coarse Versailles." Summoned to 

47 



48 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

England, they initiated with some reluctance 
that long epoch of comfort, not without glory, 
from which the Empire really dates. If their 
House seemed a stupid parody of the An- 
tonines, their Empire exceeded the bounds 
and prosperity of the Roman. The Georges 
changed climate but not manners. They con- 
sented good-naturedly to wallow in the golden 
trough provided by their English destiny. 
Thackeray could not be received at court for 
describing the nature of their wallowing. 
Nevertheless, their mediocrity satisfied Eng- 
land. George I was only a stop-gap — a peri- 
wigged scare-pope. George II had some dapper 
bravery, though his horse bolted with him on 
the field of battle. George IH watched with 
dull piety his kingdom swell into Empire of 
the world. Yet "Farmer" George saw her 
through her death-struggle with Napoleon be- 
fore he died of imbecility and old age. George 
IV was a pure scamp, and William IV a noodle. 
After these came the Victorian era. 

Victoria touched constitutional excellence, 
and even her "bad" Prince of Wales hatched 
into the best of imperial presidents. Under 
Edward VII the sovereign became almost too 
popular, for it is an unwritten law that he 
should not absorb the sentiment due to his 



THE DYNASTY OF HANOVER 49 

ministers, who cannot run the King's business 
otherwise. It was a relief to some when his 
dictatorship of tact was succeeded by George 
V. England's ideal is to hail her own common 
multiple of qualities on the throne. 

Of Victoria who shall speak? Already she 
is a myth and a legend, like Queen Elizabeth 
and Florence Nightingale. Diva Victoria. 

She was unspoiled and unimaginative, with 
a genuine gentleness, which in the eyes of the 
people assumed the aspect of a halo, and with 
touches of prejudice and severity, which sim- 
ilarly passed for wisdom. Her etiquette was 
pedantic. She kept her mother standing in 
her presence, and dismissed a venerable lord- 
in-waiting for slumbering on duty. When an 
unhappy officer of the Guard once risked a 
slightly improper story at her table she in- 
sisted on its repetition and remarked in the 
icy silence which followed: "We are not 
amused!" Her era was moral. Her own 
family were awestruck of her, but she showed 
herself big-hearted to fallen sovereigns and 
worthless old servants. She repaired the tomb 
of the last Stuart King in France and welcomed 
the last Napoleon to England. To a Scotch 
gilly, John Brown, she extended real favour, 
and even consulted him on public affairs. He 



50 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

was a rough-grained fellow, complaisant when 
sober and rude to the Queen when drunk. He 
became the aversion of the royal family and 
ministers of state. It was a good day for 
them when they could all join in singing 
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the 
grave" — though the Queen mourned. 

However, she wrote an epitaph for his 
memory surpassing what she had written for 
Disraeli. Disraeli, according to the royal pen, 
was "a dear and honoured memory," but 
John Brown was "God's own gift." 

The reign of Victoria was an era in itself. 
She was lifted, before she died, to the summit 
of a wave in world history, which she had 
mounted as a graceful girl. She became Eng- 
land's fairy godmother. She waved her sceptre 
in odd corners of the earth like a wand and 
they became hers. Under the shadow of her 
throne rose the Victorians — two generations 
of statesmen, soldiers, poets, and divines. 
Individually they were not as brilliant as the 
Elizabethans, but they were more continuously 
remarkable. It was something that early Vic- 
torians could hail a day when they saw "a 
Newman mould the church and Gladstone 
stamp the state." Prosperous times had set 
in at home tempered only by thrills of minor 



THE DYNASTY OF HANOVER 51 

disaster on the far-away frontiers abroad. The 
conditions produced a supply of great men. 
After Victoria the mould broke. The great 
Victorians died off in the nineties. Only the 
charlatan-prophets Ruskin and Chamberlain 
survived painfully into the new century to see 
the failure of their missions. Ruskin could not 
make the English see artistically, and Cham- 
berlain could not make them think imperially. 
The middle class out of which they sprang re- 
jected them both. 

Privately and publicly Victoria rejoiced 
her people. She was high-minded and stopped 
her ministers — even the Duke of Wellington — 
from swearing. Presentation at her court be- 
came a certificate in domestic morals. The 
light of her countenance was withdrawn from 
sinners who married their deceased wives' 
sisters. She drove Valentine Baker, her best 
cavalry officer, out of the army for moral mis- 
conduct. He continued his career — where 
men's motives are better consulted — as a 
Turkish pasha ! She pressed the political 
ostracism of Dilke after his divorce trial, and 
marked his prosecutor Lord Llandaff for pro- 
motion. 

She married Albert "the Good," an 
Evangelical German who introduced the 



5% THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Christmas trees into England, whereby toy- 
makers in the Fatherland have since grown 
rich. He was pure, dreamy, and peace-loving. 
He invented Exhibitions and with difficulty 
persuaded the English to accept the success 
of 1851. The English disliked him because 
he was no sportsman, though the Queen to 
his great distress made him wear a kilt in the 
Highlands. He convinced the Queen that 
England must never go to war with Germany. 
The slightest anti-German policy he considered 
"wickedness." She came to regard the sup- 
port of Prussia as a " holy duty." He must 
share the credit with Mr. Adams of once 
averting war with America. In private life he 
gave the example of the large family just as 
it was being discarded by the upper classes. 
When he stood for the Cambridge chancel- 
lorship, mocking placards were issued: "Vote 
for Albert — five children!" The English 
laughed at him until his tragic death, when 
widow and nation combined to erect a memo- 
rial in consummate Gotho-Germanic vulgarity. 
The Albert Memorial with its clumsy statuary 
surmounted by an image of brass topped by 
cross and canopy was not the souvenir of an 
unassuming prince, but the symbol of a com- 
mercial age. At Windsor his room was pre- 



THE DYNASTY OF HANOVER 53 

served as he left it — the hat and stick, and 
other possessions in grim and dusty repose. 
Victoria and Albert were always spoken of 
privately by their ministers as "Eliza" and 
"Joseph." Lord Halifax told me "Eliza" was 
coined by Dean Wellesley in order to be able 
to refer to the Queen in her presence. But 
Albert was her only love, and there is a pa- 
thetic tale of "the Widow of Windsor" travel- 
ling abroad and halting her journey to kiss 
the keys of an organ which he had once played 
as a young man. 

To have seen the old Queen is becoming a 
memory. She often drove through Eton, and 
when she died, the school was given the honour 
of lining the last lap within the castle gates 
at her final home-coming. For days we were 
marshalled in the playing-fields. The school 
Volunteers formed a thin grey line on either 
side of the road backed by the rest of the 
school, while a derelict cab passed solemnly 
up and down in guise of a hearse — not without 
some groaning laughter. Death is only less 
ridiculous than old age to Youth. The great 
day brought the usual mishaps inherent to 
British organisation. The royal horses shied 
at the station, and the new King called on a 
squad of bluejackets to draw the gun-car- 



54 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

riage through Windsor. It was a solemn 
moment when we caught sight of the sailors 
bending on their improvised ropes — the tiny 
coffin — and the galaxy of Kings. 

In the excitement some of our Volunteers 
forgot to reverse their arms. Generals on 
either side of the coffin whispered hoarsely: 
"Reverse!" — which the delinquents obeyed 
too late and in windmill fashion, almost 
striking heads in the procession. A few sec- 
onds later King and Kaiser were passing. I 
do not know if the eyes of the German war- 
lord caught our fiasco. He was walking with 
our schoolmate Albany, who had become his 
subject as Duke of Gotha. 

Albany had been as much chaffed in the 
school for becoming a German duke as Ar- 
thur of Connaught had been praised for his 
refusal. That Prince Arthur refused 40,000 
pounds a year and preferred to remain an Eng- 
lish officer on a pittance strengthened the dy- 
nasty. When Albany became Gotha his Eton 
friends performed a mock goose-step in his 
honour, reducing him to tears. The next year 
he returned for the Queen's funeral. As he 
passed, he pointed out the Eton boys to the 
Kaiser. For a moment that keen, restless eye 
shot down our unmilitary ranks, as his un- 



THE DYNASTY OF HANOVER 55 

withered arm covered us with a jerk. Few of 
the boys standing there that day in Eton suits 
have not since met his legions in battle. 

The Kaiser must be included in the dynasty, 
for, as an Irish genealogist has pointed out, if 
his mother had been a boy, he would be King 
of England ! The cross between Anglo-Han- 
overian imperialism and Prussian religio- 
militarism has proved pregnant. Genius it 
has produced in the Kaiser, not without a 
Neronian touch, as shown in his hatred for 
his mother and the false pride that plays be- 
fore a burning world. He was always an 
enfant terrible. The Duke of Connaught tells 
how the future Kaiser was intrusted to him 
at Edward VIFs wedding in the sixties. The 
duke wore a kilt over his bare knee. Half- 
way through the service he found his amiable 
young nephew had crawled low and bitten 
him on the bare ! 

The Kaiser grew to be a neurotic dreamer, 
ill content with a safe throne, nervously con- 
scious of the conquests and destinies that 
only awaited his invocation. Hence, the 
alarms and excursions with which he troubled 
his English relatives. While Victoria lived 
he only dared manifest himself by telegram. 
Between him and Edward, however, there 



56 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

grew a cordial hatred. Yet it must be admitted 
that he staved off the evil day as often as it 
was conjured up in his name by the Junkers. 
One true story may be given. 

A few years back an English ironclad 
bearing English royalty unwittingly passed 
through the Kaiser's regatta at Kiel. To the 
amazement of the imperial staff the stranger 
passed without proferring a salute. The Eng- 
lish had not suspected the Kaiser's presence, 
and were more than astonished to be followed 
and boarded by the indignant Kaiser in per- 
son. What astonished them more was that 
he wore yachting shoes under his naval uni- 
form. It was not explained till afterward 
that rather than receive an accidental insult 
before his captains, the Kaiser had scrambled 
into uniform and gone out of his way to ex- 
tract sufficient courtesy from his relative to 
save appearances. In his hurry he had for- 
gotten to change his shoes! 

Another age must judge the Kaiser. His- 
tory alone can tell what his share has been. 
It is at least a little grotesque to call him 
"Antichrist." Surely it were an anticlimax 
for Queen Victoria to have been grandmother 
to Antichrist ! 

By the time Edward succeeded Victoria 



THE DYNASTY OF HANOVER 57 

there seemed not much left to be done. He 
had always been kept out of politics by his 
mother, who showed a curious jealousy in not 
allowing him to succeed to any of his father's 
orders or positions. England's greatness at 
home could not be repeated, so Edward turned 
his mind to diplomacy abroad. Under his 
auspices as peacemaker, Europe was brought 
into that state of tranquil balance which al- 
ways precedes a war. It is while alliances are 
uncertain and the dispositions of nations un- 
pledged that peace is kept. The gamble of 
war remains too incalculable. 

Strong dispositions breed calculations and 
calculations turn into challenges. Strong rul- 
ers control national dispositions and weak 
ones cannot control challenges. Edward was 
neither, but he tried nobly to corner the ris- 
ing maelstrom. But who can square the circle 
of Fate? 

It fell to Edward to choose a good under- 
standing with Germany or France. He pre- 
ferred the latter. Trivial but world-changing 
influences affected his decision. By a strange 
irony Prince Albert's Teutonic discipline had 
driven him as a young man for consolation 
to the Parisians. There was the unforgiveness 
of his Danish Queen toward Prussia. There 



58 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

was the fate which embittered his sister, the 
Kaiser's mother. There was the Kaiser's dis- 
courteous request not to bring "his grocer 
friend" in his suite. Above all, there was the 
growing distrust for Germany, which he was 
quick to scent among the upper classes, to 
buoy him in proffering his historic embraces 
to France. 

I was in France during the Boer War and 
during Edward's visit to Paris. During 1901 
even appeals to "Fontenoy" did not prevent 
an Irishman being stoned for English. In 
those days "Chamberlain Assassin! 9 was the 
chant of the boulevards, and the suicide of 
Kitchener the perennial topic of the cafes. 
Two years later I found myself with a crowd 
of students from the Latin Quarter watching 
Edward and Pere Loubet whirling to the 
Theatre Frangais in a brougham fenced by a 
regiment of horse-tail-helmeted cuirassiers. It 
seemed a pretty pageant to us — the entente 
going to the play! None of us realised at the 
time that it was the car of Destiny we had 
watched encircled by long-haired furies, un- 
der whose wheels the generation to which we 
belonged was doomed to perish. None are 
blinder than those who live in the white light 
of history before it has been caught and dis- 



THE DYNASTY OF HANOVER 59 

sected on the spectroscope of the historian. A 
similar fate awaited Paris students and Eton 
boys: 1914 found them both of cannonable 
age! 

The reign of Victoria was an epoch, but 
Edward's was epoch-breaking. Yet he only 
set out to be a citizen-King, until everybody 
came to regard him as a personal friend — 
"Europe's Uncle" the French called him. 
He recognised Labour members at Windsor, 
and he issued a proclamation in green to the 
Irish. He was anxious to sign a Home Rule 
Bill. He received "General" Booth, which 
was as startling on the part of the Faith's 
Defender to the High Church Tories as in 
another way Roosevelt's reception of Booker 
Washington in the White House. He tried 
to omit the anti-Catholic oath at his corona- 
tion. He made a success of racing, and he 
advanced the German Ghetto to court. 

In the end he came to be considered a 
sportsman among sportsmen, a Catholic sym- 
pathiser by Catholics, "saved" by Salvation- 
ists, and a democrat by the Labourites. Among 
the Irish, whom he had offended on his visit 
as Prince of Wales by wearing Masonic regalia, 
there was a distinct movement "to capture 
the King," before he captured them ! Loyal 



60 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Orangemen signalised his visit by chalking 
"Popish Ned" on the walls of Deny. The 
Jews found themselves in clover. Sir Ernest 
Cassel, who shared the King's mentality to a 
curious degree, entered the Privy Council, and 
was generally honoured for his discretion. 
The society dancer who demanded his head 
on a charger after giving an exhibition before 
the King represented no popular feeling. 

It was by his friendship with Sir Thomas 
Lipton that Edward made the mistake of 
trying to force an election on the Royal Yacht 
Squadron. There are only two spots left in 
England where entry cannot be bought — 
Westminster Abbey and the Yacht Squadron. 
Lord Ormonde and his fellow yachtsmen black- 
balled Lipton with every available black- 
ball. Royalty had suffered few such repulses 
since Magna Charta. Yet wags inquired what 
right had the King's hereditary Butler (Or- 
monde) to take airs over the King's grocer! 

But Edward's popularity never waned. 
Even the Nonconformists who had scourged 
his princely vices were reconciled by his 
kingly furtherance of peace. To a nation of 
shopkeepers Edward "the peacemaker" seemed 
a national insurance. And all this success 
was due to the tact which allowed him to be- 
come all things to all men without endangering 



THE DYNASTY OF HANOVER 61 

his own dignity. Tact is the gift of doing the 
right thing in place of the obvious. When 
an Eastern prince, whom he was entertain- 
ing, threw a sucked gooseberry skin over his 
shoulder, Edward promptly rilled an awkward 
pause by doing likewise. When the French 
aldermen visited Windsor, he had the name of 
the Waterloo Gallery changed for the day. 
Edward appreciated tact in others. When he 
visited the Catholic seminary at Maynooth, 
he understood that Union Jacks would be a 
forced offering from Irish Nationalists, and 
was delighted to find his attiring-room deco- 
rated instead with pictures of his own race- 
horses — a sincere tribute from a horse-loving 
race! 

A good instance of tact may be mentioned 
in connection with Maynooth. The martyred 
Empress of Austria when hunting in Ireland 
once found herself within the seminary grounds. 
The president, Archbishop Walsh, welcomed 
her, and, noticing that she seemed a little em- 
barrassed at moving booted and spurred among 
doctors of divinity, chivalrously offered a loan 
of his gown, clad in which she continued her 
visit. Her return offering was not so tactful, 
for she presented the Hibernian College with 
a silver St. George ! 

Edward was a go-between rather than a 



62 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

statesman, a conversationalist rather than a 
man of letters. But he was the only diplo- 
matist in the public service. His reading was 
limited. Lady Sarah Spencer told me that she 
used to read to Gladstone in his old age. One 
day while reading Southey, the Prince of 
Wales called and insisted on Gladstone read- 
ing a book which he rated very high. It was 
Marie Corelli's BarabbasU They decided to 
give the royal choice a trial. After an hour's 
reading, Gladstone uttered one word by way 
of comment: "Southey!" 

Edward had keener perception for men 
than books. It is history how he tacitly 
dropped the absurd "divine right of Kings" 
with all its sentimental superstition and prac- 
tical limitations. He preferred to wear the 
unassailable mantle of a modern president. 
He was certainly a better Republican than 
many of the Americans who thronged his 
court. He lived like an epicurean and died 
like a stoic. Neither devil nor doctor could 
affright him much. His sudden death left a 
pang of remorse such as no world ruler had 
left since the Emperor Titus. 

The parallel between the two has not been 
noticed. Each succeeded to a so-called Au- 
gustan age, and ruled over an Empire which 



THE DYNASTY OF HANOVER 63 

was settling into comfortable stagnation. Each 
was accused of indulging in revelry before suc- 
ceeding to the throne, and each seemed to 
die untimely for the happiness of the world. 
There went out a feeling among Edward's 
subjects akin to the sentiment which used to 
prompt the deification of the Roman rulers. 

Among Catholics a myth arose that so good 
a King could only have died in the communion 
of the Church. It was rumoured that he had 
returned in his last illness not from Biarritz 
but from Lourdes hard by. A nun in the 
Midlands was reported to have seen his soul 
in the purgatory of the just ! Certain it is that 
good Protestants watched Father Vaughan 
a little anxiously during those last days ! 
When the Tablet published a photograph of 
King Edward with Father Vaughan there 
was a slight emeute in Buckingham Palace. 

George V caused no anxiety to Protestants. 
Blameless and unimaginative, he filled the 
requisition form of an English sovereign. He 
proved a sedative in feverish times. He had 
none of his father's ambition to rearrange Eu- 
rope. He collected postage-stamps in pref- 
erence to racing-cups, and drew a keener eye 
on pheasants than on women. The middle 
classes welcomed him, and the lower ones had 



64 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

no apprehensions. The upper class, who were 
beginning to play at decadence, smiled at 
his domestic virtues. A moral king is always 
a subject of ridicule. A king who tries to do 
his duty never raises that sentiment which ac- 
crues to selfish brilliance and even gallantry. 
Henry VIII remains the most popular of Eng- 
lish monarchs. Fate has not been kind to 
George V. For the sake of the dynasty he en- 
deavoured to win the Derby, but "all the 
King's horses" were unavailing. He went to 
the army and navy boxing instead of the first 
production of "Parsival," when it was ru- 
moured shocking to the Nonconformists. He 
tried to be a constitutional monarch, but only 
produced an outburst in the House. A well- 
intentioned effort to settle the Irish question 
led to a deadlock. Civil war threatened, and 
was only prevented by universal war. The 
conflict of Armageddon eddied around his 
throne, and he uttered well-chosen words and 
performed appropriate actions, though he saw 
the Guards off to annihilation in France wear- 
ing a frock coat and top-hat. He became a 
teetotaller, but his subjects left him stranded 
"dry." Throughout his reign he has showed 
himself the type intended by the settlement — 
a patriot King under Whig domination. 



THE DYNASTY OF HANOVER 65 

Yet it is unfair to judge him as critically 
and harshly as some subjects have taken upon 
themselves to do. Alone of his statesmen and 
generals he has made no blunders. He stands 
an unchanging and homely figure in the strife. 
His throne remains the safest if not, in view 
of Belgium, the most glorious in Europe. In 
contrast to the Kaiser's feverish omnipresence, 
his calm passivity is a steady guidance if not 
a wild inspiration to the Empire. 

Before the war Englishmen believed in four 
things: a powerless throne, a powerful navy, 
the diplomacy of Sir Edward Grey, and their 
form of democracy. The scene of Grey's tri- 
umphs has become the scene of British disas- 
ters. The fruits of democracy have proved 
unappetising in war time. The navy and the 
throne remain as sheet-anchors to public hope. 
George V has, by his unchanging calm and 
refusal to bow before fear or imagination, 
proved the fibre which resists the strain in 
the public mind. It is possible that he has 
those needful qualities, which could not be 
expected from a more brilliant sovereign — 
the qualities of stolid patience and imperturb- 
able phlegm. The elements of royal greatness 
are not all glittering nor necessarily such as 
chroniclers prefer to chronicle. It is something 



66 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

that a most English type of Englishman sits 
upon the throne in unstable days. 

George III amused his subjects by his in- 
ability to discover how the apple entered the 
dumpling, but he saw Napoleon dumped on 
St. Helena. George V may rouse his subjects' 
mirth, but he is their best figurehead sailing 
through the waters of Armageddon. 

A curious passage in Carlyle's Frederick 
the Great recalls as an obstacle to Prussian 
plans — " Britannic George." " Suppose your 
Britannic Majesty," quoth Frederick, "would 
make with me an express neutrality conven- 
tion ? " But he wouldn't. History often re- 
peats. 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 

The atmosphere of the University in England 
is indefinable. Oxford and Cambridge are 
microcosms of national history. Tradition 
and freedom mingle through their precincts. 
To the powers "that are" they are obsequious 
only in the choice of their Chancellors, who are 
dukes at least. When Wellington was made 
Cambridge Chancellor, Archbishop Whately 
had the spirit to apply for the command of 
the Horse Guards. The Universities may ap- 
preciate royal favour like the sunshine, but 
there is no sun-worship. An English University 
is its own universe. 

The University is the only time and place 
in the lives of Englishmen when they show 
their emotions. Faith and scepticism, enthu- 
siasm and cynicism bear sway among the 
young men. The undergraduate has a license 
to practise his real self. As a rule, he regrets 
the experiment and slips into one of the con- 
ventional grooves prepared for him. Only 
the idealist continues to be an undergradu- 
ate through life. The English environment is 

67 



68 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

one which brings rockets to dark earth. The 
torches of English civilisation are safety-lamps 
which warm without consuming their carriers. 
They are passed on by one generation of 
common-sensed officials all over the Empire to 
another. They are cherished at home by a 
semi-athletic caste of clergy and half-humor- 
ous types of lawyer and legislator — in other 
words the University class. By such the Em- 
pire is managed if not uplifted — as a depart- 
ment store rather than as a spiritual force. 
The cream of University men includes the 
educated part of the upper and the upper part 
of the educated class. These men reach suc- 
cess and honour. Everybody who is not in 
the University class had better be a duke or a 
salesman, who can both afford to be without 
a degree. 

The colleges at Oxford and Cambridge 
form a mosaic of English history. If they are 
winged by modern science they are also 
weighted with tradition. They are demo- 
cratic unto themselves, but their tendency is 
to make a caste. The experiment of bringing 
Rhodes scholars from all over the world to 
Oxford or Indian babus to Cambridge is doubt- 
ful. The colonials are better for their own 
colleges instead of learning to imitate English 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 69 

sportsmen. The Indians are the worse for 
being educated as an equal race in England by 
way of prelude to being ruled as an inferior 
one in India. I recall an Indian at Cam- 
bridge saying: 

"In India I was taught that white men and women were 
sacred. But for three years here I have been cadged by Eng- 
lish porters and prostitutes for the price of beer." 

A few more sentimental mistakes, and 
Oxford and Cambridge will pass like old Eng- 
lish boxing and London society itself into the 
shadowy vale of cosmopolitanism. 

The education at the University is more in- 
telligent than scientific. The individual is al- 
lowed to develop by himself even at the hazard 
of indolence. Facilities are afforded, but no 
system is imposed. A man may accept the 
facilities and make the best of them, or he 
may start a new school. There are no official 
schools of thought. Anybody is only too wel- 
come who will think at all. I have known no 
Cambridge teacher not to confess that the Ger- 
man training was more up-to-date and or- 
ganised. Provincial Universities like Leeds 
and Liverpool are more practical. London 
University is far more thorough. The German 
University is a grinding-mill compared to the 



70 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

loose-flowing moulds at Oxford and Cam- 
bridge. 

Oxford and Cambridge ! Quis separabit ? 
They are the sacred twins suckled by one 
alma mater. They have set the tone of Eng- 
lish life, and embalmed every phase and period 
of her history. It is difficult to state the real 
difference between the rivals. It is a divine 
truth that Cambridge men are Aristotelians 
and Oxford men Platonists. Cambridge is 
scientific where Oxford is mediaeval. If Ox- 
ford is called "the home of lost causes," the 
Cambridge of Newton, Harvey, and Darwin 
has some claim to be the home of discovered 
ones. Yet, curiously enough, the whole stock 
of English poetry flows from Cambridge — 
Chaucer, Milton, Spenser, Gray, Wordsworth, 
Byron, Tennyson ! Oxford can only point to 
a solitary Shelley, whom she was careful to 
expel for atheism ! 

But Oxford's bead-roll is in religion. Cam- 
bridge cannot match Grossetete, Wolsey, Wes- 
ley, Keble, Manning, and Newman. Alone 
among northern Universities Oxford begat a 
Pope — the Cretan Alexander V, whom envious 
Cambridge men insist to have been the Sixth 
of that name. 

The Universities keep the old tradition. 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 71 

With responsive spirits they leave a perennial 
influence, which without being philosophical 
or sentimental has proved the seed-ground of 
all that is most generous in English life. 
Against backgrounds that are material and 
uninspired the University for ever points to 
higher and nobler ideals. Every Varsity man 
carries away in some measure amongst the 
husks of knowledge the certainty that there 
are less things saleable in heaven and earth 
than the advocates of sound commercial edu- 
cation would suppose. 

Oxford is only a street that is not straight, 
winding under a canopy of towers and bells, 
but saint and cavalier, scholar and adven- 
turer have trodden and loved it above the 
broadways of all the world. Cambridge is 
only an ecclesiastical hamlet planted on a 
fenland brook, but all the poets of England 
have watched their youth slip by with its 
muddy stream. From Cambridge, too, came 
the poet of the Great War. 

I was at King's College, Cambridge (1904- 
8). King's was considered by affectionate 
King's men as "The Cambridge Balliol." 
Candid friends considered it "Balliol without 
Balliol men." There was some truth in the 
saying, which confirmed another to the effect 



72 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

that modern Cambridge has been "the grave 
of genius." 

The men of Balliol have obtained an un- 
canny share of success even among Oxford 
men. Jowett, their great Master, seemed to 
be able to stamp his pupils with intellectual 
efficiency in class followed by an effortless 
superiority when they entered the world. 
His pupils included Milner, Curzon, Lans- 
downe, Grey, Asquith. The Balliol type suc- 
ceeded because it did not pitch its ideal too 
high. Self-sufficient and self-supporting, their 
combined advance in church and state cul- 
minated in the hour that Premier Asquith 
gave Cosmo Lang the Archbishopric of York. 
The age which reverenced the Balliol ideal ap- 
proved the transaction. A day was to come 
testing that ideal by trial, not as before by 
success. Balliol stands or falls by Asquith's 
premiership. 

King's was very different. We were as in- 
tellectual and our Greek scholarship was better 
— but we had not produced a great man since 
Sir Robert Walpole — excepting, perhaps, Strat- 
ford de Redcliffe, "the great Eltchi," and the 
disastrous pride which led to the Crimea and 
a pro-Turkish policy. King's men were less 
practical and more abstract than Balliol men. 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 73 

The type has been sketched by one of their 
number, Mr. Wingfield Stratford: 

He has studied Socialism with Plato and heresy with the 
Fathers; he has found the higher thought in the valleys of the 
Yang-tse, and evolution on the shores of the iEgean. Though 
a fighter and an idealist, the catchwords of clique and party 
leave him cold . . . too responsive to genius to miss any spark 
of it in a contemporary or an opponent, he is at once the fair- 
est and most redoubtable of controversialists. 

This well expresses the secret and the cause 
of Cambridge thinking. Cambridge men can- 
not or will not join or form parties. Oxford 
men, however, have incarnated their genius 
in religious movements, such as Wesley's or 
Newman's, or in influences upon the civil 
body like Matthew Arnold's or Jowett's. 
The Cambridge genius always tended to a 
higher abstract thought, that slipped beyond 
theology and above patriotism. These were 
left to Oxford. Oxford stood loyally by the 
Stuarts and she professes religious orthodoxy 
to-day. Perhaps one terrible sentence will 
discriminate historically between the twain. 
Cambridge produced the Reformers and Ox- 
ford burned them. 

Life at King's was an inspiring but dis- 
arming experience. As a result of high think- 
ing, the finished King's man acquired the 



74 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

seeds of dilettantism. He entered the world a 
little sceptical, a little doubtful how far the 
battle of life was worth fighting. He was un- 
fitted by the previous and supreme struggle 
for knowledge for knowledge's sake. Never- 
theless, there were many King's men who 
tried to practise a definite idealism in life. 

The society at King's consisted of thirty 
Fellows or Dons and a hundred and fifty un- 
dergraduates. The teaching staff was good 
but eccentric. The best of them taught by 
inspired intercourse rather than by formal lec- 
tures. For instance, Walter Headlam, who 
did more than all Tubingen and Gottingen 
to restore the Greek text of iEschylus, could 
only instruct select groups of explorers to his 
rooms. On a late afternoon they might dis- 
cover him dressing, for the day and the night 
were alike to him; and, like Mrs. Cannam 
in Dickens, he could not distinguish between 
winter and summer. He ate when he happened 
to be hungry and lectured, like an Athenian 
sophist, when confronted by the seeking ig- 
norant. Set utterances and horal meals he 
scorned as impediments from which his clear 
spirit had been emancipated. The floor of 
his room was knee-deep in books, folios, and 
papers. Unopened correspondence lay strati- 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 75 

fied between one week's book reading and the 
next. A youth was once simple enough to 
show up a copy of Greek verses overnight. 
In the morning Headlam only remarked: 
"I am afraid it is lost for ever !" 

Headlam used to sit in the midst of the 
strata balancing an ink-pot on one knee and 
scribbling words into Greek texts missing 
since the Renaissance on the other. His 
famous emendations in exquisite script were 
allowed to float about the room until gathered 
for the Classical Review. A year later they 
became the prey of German editors. Head- 
lam was of those who knew too much to be 
able to finish a book conscientiously. If a 
commentary was pushed into his hand he 
would discourse divinely on two or three lines 
of poetry — but woe to the commentator! It 
was exciting to pupils to learn that text-books 
which lecturers were solemnly commending 
elsewhere were riddled with idiotic pedantry. 
Headlam's assaults on Verrall were famous 
in the annals of literary duelling. He possessed 
that rare brilliance typical of English scholar- 
ship, which is content to leave theoretic spade- 
work to the Germans, while mercilessly crit- 
icising their practice. To him the German 
editors were only guessing what iEschylus 



76 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

ought to have written, but did not. Head- 
lam's work recalled Cornewall Lewis's deft 
attacks on Niebuhr's Roman History and Por- 
son's amused contempt of a German rival: 

"The Germans in Greek 
Are sadly to seek, 
Save only Hermann 
And Hermann's a German !'* 

Even Liddell and Scott's Lexicon — the lan- 
tern which guides the Anglo-Saxon race in 
its study of Greek — fell under Headlam's 
lash. At the time of its revision he made a 
celebrated offer to the Oxford Press to point 
out a distinct blunder on every page! He 
gave his pupils that information which is not 
in books. He could discuss the Eleusinian 
mysteries with illustrations from the Bible, 
or point out the Wagnerian motifs underlying 
the Greek Choruses — things hidden from gram- 
marians and the blind race who set examina- 
tion papers for the blind. I can hear him 
explaining the witchcraft in the Persce as 
though he believed in sorcery, or trying to 
strum the lost music of the Agamemnon on 
a hired piano. 

In his fragrant enthusiasm and his exquisite 
sense for the lost voices of Hellas he was akin 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 77 

to Shelley — save that he preferred to write 
his poetry in Greek, which he considered an 
easier language than English! A real parallel 
lies between Headlam and Porson — England's 
finest Grecians. Each waged controversies of 
scorn, and, by brilliant emendations, each won 
the clever perversion of "splendid emendax" 
for Horace's splendide mendax. Exactly one 
hundred years after Porson, Headlam died, 
leaving the iEschylus unfinished which he had 
dedicated to Swinburne eight years before. 
He was very fond of Swinburne's letter of 
reply, that he regarded the Orestean Trilogy 
"as probably on the whole the greatest spir- 
itual work of man." He used to point out 
to us how Swinburne was often impeded in 
his English verse by thinking in Greek — a 
trick he had learned from Landor. With him 
perished something very old, and yet very 
young. 

Another King's Don upon whose lips men 
hung wonderingly was Lowes Dickinson, one of 
Chesterton's Heretics, who was understood to 
be able to inculcate a prose style under guise 
of a teacher of history. He wrote the "Letters 
of a Chinese Official," which drew a pompous 
reply from Mr. Bryan, under the impression 
he was pulling some Mandarin's pigtail. The 



78 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

irony of time has brought the comment that 
Bryan's policy is Chinification ! He was a 
good metaphysician, but the effect on his hear- 
ers was agnosticism, and on his imitators con- 
ceit. He slowly drowned the Christianity of 
the college in intellectual cream. But he 
stood out for fair play. He sounded the first 
note in the Independent Review calling for a 
reconsideration of the treatment meted to 
Oscar Wilde. The publication of De Prqfun- 
dis in 1905 came to many like the cry of a 
literary Dreyfus. The Wilde culte dates from 
Dickinson's famous complaint that the Eng- 
lish could make nothing of him or Blake or 
Shelley — "but martyrs." No recorder of the 
time can but consecrate or desecrate a page to 
that Byron de nos jours, who shocked and fas- 
cinated the young more after death than 
during life. His vogue represented less a 
literary phase than a kink in the Teutonic 
temperament. Within a few years ten biog- 
raphies of him appeared in English while 
German "sociologists" reduced his sins to 
scientific pamphlets. Perhaps he was more 
guilty in word than in deed, but the national 
hypocrisy which trampled upon him also 
raised him to the dignity of a scapegoat. Be- 
tween the Diocesan school at Portora on the 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 79 

shores of Lough Erne and the cemetery of 
Pere Lachaise lay the history of the whole 
aesthetic movement. 

One of his sons joined Cambridge under a 
false name. Men used to criticise his father 
loudly in his presence to show that they did 
not suspect his identity. It is memorable that 
a son of Wilde has since fallen in France under 
another name than that which he redeemed. 

Discussion at King's was very catholic. 
Fabianism, Rowing, Medievalism, Darwin, 
Ghostly Research, and our own Dons were 
perennial topics. Our Dons included Professor 
Bury and Sir Robert Ball — who were the 
skimmed cream of Dublin for English con- 
sumption. Bury succeeded Lord Acton in 
the chair of History, and was understood to 
have become a total recluse in the attempt to 
read Acton's library. Sir Robert Ball, known 
as "Zerubbabel," was chief jester in a very 
humourless circle. His best story pertained 
to a popular lecture on "The Mountains of 
the Moon," which he once expected to deliver 
in a provincial town. As he was driven to 
the town hall he was faced by placards ad- 
vertising him on the subject of "Earthquakes." 
How he gratified an English mob desirous of 
knowledge of the earth's crust by deft manip- 



80 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

ulation of photographic slides of the moon 
is a tale still told in colleges. 

One charming old man of antediluvian 
standing dwelt among us, whom only Lamb or 
Dickens could have described. He was the 
subject of as many legends as Jowett at Ox- 
ford. Outside Latin Poesy, Madrigals, and 
Whist he was a child. He had made a railway 
map of excursion and cheap trains all over 
England in the hope of visiting his scattered 
friends at one swoop, but one link was always 
missing ! It was said that when intrusted with 
the College Chapel he filled his pockets with 
nuts and pennies to facilitate counting the 
men. The confusion which ensued in the 
Porch of men groping for dropped pennies and 
nuts was so great that, mistaking it for a riot, 
he hastily announced: "No chapel for the day." 

The only Don outside English traditions was 
Sir Charles Waldstein. As Lowes Dickinson 
was a Cambridge version of Pater, so Wald- 
stein was an Americanised Ruskin. It was a 
bold step to bring a professor from the States 
to teach fine art to Cambridge, but he made 
a most suggestive teacher. He used to ask 
audiences of brute-male Britons how many had 
ever noticed the colour of their mothers' eyes. 

In my time he was planning a cosmo- 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 81 

politan dream for excavating Herculaneum. 
His lectures were frequently broken by ap- 
plause as he read telegrams from the last 
sovereign to approve the scheme. The only 
other Don of American training in Cambridge 
was Mr. Lapsley from Harvard, who put on 
the mantle of an English Don with the au- 
tochthonous grace and ability of Americans 
placed in old English institutions. He was a 
fair return from America for the original gift 
of John Harvard, who was bred at Emmanuel, 
Cambridge. I do not think I have met a sin- 
cerer Englishman except Henry James. I 
sometimes suspect that New England is the 
only bit of "Old England" left. 

The two great and venerable figures at 
King's were the Provost, "Monty" James, 
and Oscar Browning, "The O. B." Dr. James 
was at the head of all mediaeval palaeography, 
and used to distract our evenings by his ghastly 
"Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary," which since 
gathered in book form have thrilled Mr. 
Roosevelt. 

Oscar Browning had known everybody and 
done everything for a generation. In his 
History lectures he could refer familiarly to 
viceroys and statesmen by their Christian 
names. The legends told of him would fill 



82 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

a volume. One day as Tennyson entered the 
great court of King's a bulky professor is 
said to have run to him, explaining: "I am 
Browning!'' 

"No, you are not," replied Tennyson, and 
walked away. 

Another legend recounted that 0. B. had 
assisted, owing to his learning and in spite of 
his heresy, at the Vatican Council. He stood 
for Parliament and was defeated by his own 
pupil Austen Chamberlain, whose supporters 
followed the sage with derisive cries of "poet !" 

O. B. was the perennial butt for University 
jokes. In my time he retired, having out- 
lived his glory. On Sunday evenings a rabble 
of the curious gathered in the rooms through 
which the best of the Cambridge world had 
passed, and listened to O. B.'s swan-song, 
which was a gabble of royal anecdotes accom- 
panied on an instrument irreverently called 
the O. B.-ophone ! Nevertheless, Quixote was 
not a greater Don in his time. Both at Eton 
and Cambridge he had fought for reform and 
met a reformer's fate. Of his courage I only 
remember that in old age he acted Pickwick 
in Esperanto. 

It was curious how Cambridge lived on the 
myths of her own men. There was the great 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 83 

Dr. Munro, professor of Latin, who was pas- 
sionately fond of figs. One year the Trinity 
fig-tree produced amid much leafen travail, 
but one enormous fruit, which Munro tended 
until the eve before eating, when he affixed his 
card with "Dr. Munro's fig" written upon it. 
The next morning the fig was gone, but on 
the card was added: "A fig for Dr. Munro !" 
Who, too, can forget the memory of J. K. 
Stephen, the flower of King's, who once read 
a learned paper to a learned society from a 
few blank sheets of paper ! He died young 
and mad, leaving behind him two memorable 
lines desirous of a better country: 

"When the Rudyards cease from Kipling 
And the Haggards ride no more !" 

which reminds me that the lyrics of "The 
Merry Widow" and "The Quaker Girl" were 
written by a King's Don (Mr. Roper). 

Among the younger men was a brilliant in- 
consequential being, Wingfield Stratford, who 
wrote a remarkable History of English Patriot- 
ism. It amounted to a Rise and Decline of the 
British Empire (haunted by fear of the de- 
cline), and written in the torrential and per- 
sonal style of late Victorian. 

King's perhaps attained a zenith when 



84 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Wingfield Stratford was correcting his last 
pages in the same building in which Rupert 
Brooke was touching his early sonnets. Neither 
was then known outside the college gates. 
Brooke has since been saluted as a poet in two 
hemispheres. Yet it will be rather as a dawn 
star than as a harvest-moon that his light will 
shine. He was cut down on life's threshold, 
like a knight errant beating on the door that 
others will open. To King's men his death came 
with the pathos of the death of a relative or 
a child. We felt the same sickness at heart 
on reading Brooke's name in a casualty list 
that we would feel on seeing a lark shot to 
earth as it rose in song. We could have spared 
half our "distinguished men of letters" for 
him. 

Well I remember the first day I saw him at 
King's — on the football field. Suddenly a 
freshman with long and not unhyacinthine 
locks was seen to tear through the muddy 
scrum. It was Rupert Brooke, and we paused 
in our game to observe this semblance of a 
Greek god in a football shirt. "And did you 
once see Shelley plain?" another age will ask. 

Brooke's first public appearance was as the 
messenger in the Eumenides, which was played 
in the original Greek in the Michaelmas term 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 85 

of 1906. With his clarion, buskins, and classical 
dress he looked like a youthful Gabriel "wind- 
ing God's lonely horn." He was one of those 
people who could not help looking picturesque. 

It was a glory for King's that Rupert Brooke 
and Edward Busk should have been contem- 
poraries in her gates. When Brooke was send- 
ing his first sonnets to the Westminster Gazette, 
Busk was amusing us with "the new sport of 
motor-bicycle making," as we called it. He 
was the most promising engineer of his year, 
and solved the problem of aeroplane stability 
under a high wind in a manner that gave the 
English command of the air. Both met early 
and tragic ends. Brooke was buried in an 
olive grove in the Greek seas. Busk was in- 
cinerated in his blazing car hundreds of feet 
above the ground. Busk was perhaps the 
greatest individual loss during the war. It 
was only fitting for the King to write a letter 
to mark his worth. He had applied genius to 
mechanics. I remember him as a boy of in- 
domitable energy and resource. The only 
meal to which he ever asked me took place at 
midnight down the river, in a distant garden 
to which the guests swam, propelling the means 
of entertainment in a bathtub. 

Besides real genius, which necessarily attains 



86 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

fame, there was a band of enthusiasts with 
us, who won such honour as comes from the 
breach of conventional methods — men who 
were revolted by the sterile agnosticism or 
careless national sense in our midst. Youthful 
charlatanism took curious forms. In my time 
two champions of Christendom flung them- 
selves at the prevailing infidelity, and after- 
ward became insane. One sacrificed his 
career to found a sect, and another attempted 
to disprove materialism by rather gruesome 
experiments in psychical research. In the 
name and cause of the disparaged Deity he 
ventured to raise the most famous of college 
ghosts, which had long and quietly inhabited 
rooms at Corpus. 

Religion we used to debate furiously. The 
strangest wager I ever heard of arose from such 
a debate. An agnostic and a Christian, after 
an evening of vain controversy, dared each 
other to persuade a woman to leave the streets 
on the ethical or the Christian plea. It was 
the agnostic who won. 

The undergraduate tendency led men to 
extremes before they subsided into ordinary 
life. Enthusiasts who persisted in their en- 
thusiasms were liable to be discarded. If 
they were prepared to go into the wilderness 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 87 

they might go alone. Men like Father Hugh 
Benson, Leo Maxse, Eustace Miles, and Er- 
nest Edghill had recently gone from Cambridge 
against a mocking world. All except Benson 
were King's men. Miles gave London a Pro- 
teid Restaurant. Benson threw his vivid per- 
sonality into the Catholic cause. Edghill, the 
finest theologian of his day, who was said to 
have composed his Hulsean lectures in the 
train overnight, wore away his short days 
wrestling with the social danger in the slums. 
Leo Maxse scented and denounced the Ger- 
man peril for ten years before the war. As 
editor of the National Review he endured all 
the pangs and triumphs of Cassandra. The 
more hysterically he told sooth the more bit- 
terly he was repelled by those who preferred 
smooth-lipped prophets. The National Re- 
view played a historic part in those days, not 
unlike that of the Anti-Jacobin, under Can- 
ning's editorship, in stimulating feeling against 
Napoleon and the French. Maxse lived to be 
justified, but Benson and Edghill died like 
candles in a high wind by the wayside. 
Edghill was the protagonist in a fierce fight 
whether the King's College Mission should 
be Christian or ethical in character. As the 
Christians drew into rival sects, the agnostic 



88 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

element triumphed. Rome naturally offered 
a Gordian solution to many, of whom Benson 
certainly proved a flower among controversial 
thorns. 

It seemed strange for the son of an Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury to become a Catholic 
priest. Yet never was chrysalis hatched with 
such jubilant celerity as when the Benjamin 
of Lambeth Palace became a free-lance in the 
service of the Vatican. As a curate in Cam- 
bridge he uttered an ascetic note in the home 
of "muscular Christianity." Charles Kingsley 
was responsible for muscular Christianity. As 
a typical Cambridge man he provoked the Ox- 
ford Cardinal's Apologia. The Cambridge ideal 
associated Health and Holiness. The extreme 
opposite was St. Hildegarde's saying that God 
cannot dwell in a healthy body. The old 
Puritans would have said the same of a happy 
body. But all happiness is haunted, and Ben- 
son exactly appreciated the mixture of fear 
and fun which goes to the making of true re- 
ligion. With fecundive fervour he poured 
forth a series of novels, which may be described 
as the Epistles of Hugh the Preacher to the 
Anglicans — to the Conventionalists — to the 
Sensualists, etc. 

I can see him sitting in the firelight of my 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 89 

room at King's, unravelling a weird story 
about demoniacal substitution, his eyeballs 
staring into the flame, and his nervous fingers 
twitching to baptise the next undergraduate 
he could thrill or mystify into the fold of 
Rome. 

His career was that of an ecclesiastical 
Winston Churchill, with whom he offered a 
parallel even to the stutter in his speech. 
Yet both could command the irritated at- 
tention of the elder men they addressed. In 
each case a father's son made a famous father 
memorable for his son. It was Archbishop 
Benson who gave Anglicans their watchword 
in resisting "The Italian Mission," and Ran- 
dolph Churchill who taught the Tories to 
chime: "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be 
right." It was a curious denouement to hear 
the sons of both reversing the wisdom of their 
fathers. Winston preached Home Rule in Bel- 
fast, and Hugh Benson upheld the Pope in 
Cambridge — instances both of the old Greek 
word peripateia, which may be translated, 
"the somersault divine" ! 

The King's man was perhaps a type, but the 
Cambridge man ran out of a more general 
mould. It may be queried what he had to 
show at the end and how he has proved in 



90 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

the day of national trial. The ordinary de- 
gree man leaves Cambridge with a certificate 
enabling him to step into the clerical, legal, or 
teaching professions, but each individual must 
find himself out as well as his profession, and 
then how to profess it. He is better equipped 
physically than scientifically. Sixty per cent 
have passed through the training necessary to 
athletics. Athletics do count first in University 
life and the authorities submit. Perhaps, they 
prefer to turn out normal, clean-limbed men to 
a horde of pedants and professors. To win a 
dark or light Blue at athletics gives men an 
unassailable distinction through life. The 
Chancellor of the Exchequer McKenna learned 
to count as bow of the Cambridge boat. Picked 
parishes and legal partnerships drop into the 
lap of athletic heroes, which is logical in a land 
where Boat-race day is a national event, and 
Empire day a recent creation of faddists. The 
Oxford or Cambridge rowing Blue touched the 
high-water mark of the system. The row- 
ing coaches were subsidiary gods. The whole 
University could be divided on a matter of 
oarsmanship. To the nation it was more im- 
portant that Cambridge should defeat the 
Harvard eight which appeared on the Thames 
in 1906 than that the House of Lords on its 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 91 

banks should be saved. And there is sanity 
in the choice. A seat may be purchased in 
the Lords but not in the Varsity Crew. 

Ideals hold sway at Cambridge, but the 
strenuous life is not abhorred. In my time 
the most famous exponent of Rooseveltism 
offered two wagers to the effeminate. To 
row against anybody the seventeen miles to 
Ely, and then run the full distance back, or 
to walk a greater number of miles in the day 
than any one could eat eggs! 

The Great War has not found University 
men lacking. No genius or strategist has 
arisen from the academic ranks, but by scores 
and hundreds Varsity men have left their 
office stools and taken command of companies 
in the field as readily as though they were 
football-teams. They have shown themselves 
efficient, chivalrous, and fearless. The losses 
which have befallen them are greater propor- 
tionately than in any other class. University 
traditions may perish, as they perished in 
America during her Civil War; the old-fash- 
ioned culture and the time-honoured jokes 
may become extinct — the science of English 
rowing even may be lost in foreign graves 
—but the great Universities will not have 
worked or played in vain ! 



THE RELIGION OF ENGLAND 

"Christian England" is a cant term much 
employed by the critics and the upholders of 
orthodoxy alike. What it means is a dis- 
puted proposition. As a Catholic nation Eng- 
land partook nobly of the Crusades, and 
built the finest set of national cathedrals ex- 
tant in Europe — thanks, indeed, to loans from 
the Jews, whom she treated with intermittent 
tolerance. The Crusaders, the Lollards, the 
Elizabethan High-Churchmen, the Caroline 
divines, the Puritans, and eighteenth-century 
bishops, who signed the articles of faith "with 
a smile or a sigh," have all left their mark on 
the national religion. A general result makes 
English Christianity sentimental rather than 
theological. It tends to save appearances 
rather than souls. 

In public life religion makes little difference. 
The devotee and the anticlerical is equally 
rare. The state bishops are objects of envy 
rather than of reverence. The depths of 
religious awe between a foreign Catholic and 
an Anglican appear in the story of the honest 

92 



THE RELIGION OF ENGLAND 93 

Briton arguing with a Frenchman and end- 
ing: "To H— 11 with the Pope !" With a pal- 
lor befitting the terrible words of his reply, the 
Frenchman drew himself up and uttered: "To 
H — 11 with the Archbishop of Canterbury!" 
Whereat the Briton dissolved in laughter. 
'To H — 11 with the gold stick in waiting" 
would have sounded as comical. The English 
Primate is a court official, and it is the Chan- 
cellor who keeps the King's conscience. Arch- 
bishop Laud was the only occupant of the 
see since the Reformation to press divine 
rather than official honours on himself, and 
the only one to suffer execution on the scaf- 
fold in consequence. 

Reverence and common sense go to the 
making of English religion. "Preach the 
Gospel and put down enthusiasm," was a 
Victorian Bishop's watchword. The religion 
taught at the great schools amounts prac- 
tically to a light coat of moral disinfectant 
with a sentimental affection for the school 
chapel thrown in. A sixth-form boy can bet- 
ter criticise New Testament Greek, compared, 
say, with Thucydides, than expound its doc- 
trines. 

It is only at the University that such as 
are religious tend to shuffle into shades and 



94 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

sects. Organised efforts to draw men into 
different doxies fail. The ordinary English- 
man has not been troubled by religion for two 
hundred years. At Cambridge missioners from 
America were received with polite amuse- 
ment. Everything American — Mrs. Eddy's 
Theology, Mr. Bryan's Bimetallism, Mr. Car- 
negie's Libraries, or even Gildersleeve's Pindar 
were regarded as nostrums. The University 
training secures a constant stream of recruits 
for the Church, for it often unfits them for 
any other profession. To the gentleman of 
culture or country pursuits, the Church of 
England rectory affords a temptation that 
the vulgar Dissenting manse or the disciplined 
Catholic presbytery cannot offer. The ideal 
of the English Church has been to provide 
a resident gentleman for every parish in the 
kingdom, and there have been worse ideals. 
In the good old days the parson read Horace 
and rode to hounds. Since agricultural de- 
pression has set in, the curate reads Kipling 
and plays football. The old-fashioned Angli- 
canism and Dissent of England are practically 
dead, and parasites devour their remains. Rit- 
ualism has eaten into the core of the Estab- 
lishment, while sects and political societies 
have dismembered Puritanism. The Catholic 



THE RELIGION OF ENGLAND 95 

Church has made conquests in the upper 
classes, but she has leaked from the lower 
story. 

Anglicanism is less a creed than a condi- 
tion of mind peculiar to the English. An- 
glicanism spells an ideal of temporal followed 
by eternal comfort. It is the historical at- 
tempt to combine the advantages of the Catho- 
lic and the Reformed faith. It implies tradition 
without mystery, bishops without authority, an 
open Bible and a closed Hell. The Articles of 
the English Church were originally articles of 
peace devised to enable the rival supporters 
of church and sovereign to live under one 
roof. Real Protestantism came with the Pu- 
ritans, and Cromwell was the first Noncon- 
formist. Anglican doctrine changes with dynas- 
ties and fashions of thought. The ritual varies 
with each parish. But the Church has its 
place as an old-established institution dis- 
seminating traditions of decency and honour. 
Even Catholics would deprecate its disestab- 
lishment as a social disaster second only to 
the overthrow of the House of Lords. 

The two religious movements of the nine- 
teenth century, the Evangelical and the Cath- 
olic revivals, loosened the stakes of Angli- 
canism as a mere church-and-state preserve. 



96 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

The medievalist with a taste for liturgy, the 
Hot Gospeller, and the critic of the Pentateuch 
all entered within its portals. The virtue of 
toleration even for opposing beliefs has been 
deduced by apologists from necessity. There 
is a delightful tale of a Bishop of Gloucester 
who ruled over High and Low Church with 
an equal mind until the former presented him 
with a popish mitre, which he promised to 
wear. On the expected day the Low Church 
gathered to protest against a Bishop wearing 
a hat in church, but the wise Bishop satisfied 
both by carrying the dangerous emblem under 
his arm ! 

There is a wonderful comprehensiveness in 
the Church of England. At Gibraltar or in 
Ulster Anglicanism may be a different church. 
The Bishop of Gibraltar used to dress as a 
Catholic prelate, whose see was Southern Eu- 
rope. "I believe I am in your Lordship's 
diocese," was the Pope's humorous comment 
to him. It was the same pontiff who answered 
an Anglican Bishop's request by giving him 
the formal blessing reserved to incense before 
burning. The contretemps caused by High 
Church bishops travelling abroad are beyond 
count. The greatest sensation was caused by 
a Scottish prelate who went to France in the 



THE RELIGION OF ENGLAND 97 

purple cassock of a continental bishop. As 
he brought his wife with him, the pious inn- 
keeper refused to allow her in. 

"Mais je suis en vacances" explained the 
paragon of diocesan respectability. 

"II ny a pas de doute que monseigneur est 
en vacances" replied the poor innkeeper to 
whom the situation was with difficulty ex- 
plained by the chaplain. 

The most curious compromise in England 
is that the wives of spiritual peers have no 
official position. This dates from Queen Eliza- 
beth's cheery remark when the first married 
Archbishop brought his lady to court: "Mis- 
tress I would not, wife I cannot call you." 

In Ireland the Anglican bishops amounted 
to Cromwellians in lawn sleeves. To-day they 
are the leaders of a stranded crusade and the 
trustees of a disestablished church. For three 
hundred years they preached that St. Patrick 
was an Anglican, until Gladstone bade them 
throw up the missionary sponge. Though the 
native cathedrals and old revenues had been 
made theirs, the duel had proven unequal. 
The Catholic Church thrived on poverty and 
persecution, and became more than ever the 
church of the people. In contrast to elsewhere, 
the Catholic Church in Ireland became so 



98 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

identified with popular rights and opposed to 
feudalism that I remember an old Catholic 
peer exclaiming: "We have held the faith in 
spite of the priests ! " 

Anglicanism failed in Ireland because of the 
poor quality of bishops. Swift said they were 
highwaymen who stole the papers of the true 
bishops on their way over. At the end of the 
eighteenth century Primate Stuart wrote to 
Lord Hardwicke: 

Fix Mr. Beresford at Kilmore, and we shall then have 
three very inactive bishops, and, what I trust the world has 
not yet seen, three bishops in one district reported to be the 
most profligate men in Europe. 

As late as 1822, Bishop Jocelyn of Clogher 
was removed from his see for scandalous 
crime. There were always exceptions. There 
was a Berkeley at Cloyne and an Alexander 
at Armagh, the latter of whom survived into 
the twentieth century as the last of the state- 
appointed bishops in Ireland. When a child 
I recited "There is a green hill far away" 
to his wife, the authoress. I was asked at the 
close which verse I liked best. I answered: 
"The last." "And why ?" "Because it is the 
last," I replied frankly. 

When Archbishop Alexander was old and 



THE RELIGION OF ENGLAND 99 

I was young we became close friends. I was 
sometimes left in charge of him at his palace, 
for he grew very feeble. We used to drive 
together round the patrimony of Patrick (the 
demesne that disestablishment had left him) 
and over the crest of Armagh, where Brian 
Boru lies buried and the flags taken from the 
French at Ballinamuck hang in the old cathe- 
dral. After a peep to see how his rival, Car- 
dinal Logue, was progressing with his brand- 
new structure, we used to return to discuss 
Greek plays and Latin Fathers under the pic- 
tures of all the courtiers, scoundrels, and good 
men who had ever ruled Armagh for England. 
The greatest in the miscellany was Usher, 
that truly Irish divine, who first proved that 
Christ was born in the year 4 B. C. 

Archbishop Alexander could recall New- 
man's preaching at Oxford. "He was an 
apostle!" he used to say, and to hear him 
preach in St. Mary's he often went without 
the supper which his college had made a 
movable feast to coincide with the hour of 
Newman's preaching. Dr. Alexander was a 
High-Churchman, and when he maintained the 
symbolism of the Cross an Orange mob stoned 
his carriage in Dublin! Plunged all his life 
in the Irish maelstrom, he always held out for 



100 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

peace with principle. Old age found him un- 
daunted and unsoured, nor had humour de- 
parted from him or his neighbour, Cardinal 
Logue. I wish I could sketch that quaint and 
venerable pair as I remember them. 

Archbishop Alexander, with his round, be- 
nignant face and bulky frame, needed only a 
peruke to resemble an angelified Dr. Johnson, 
as he laid down the laws of poetry and the 
Church to us over his teacups. Here is a 
page I once scribbled like a third-rate Boswell: 

" Pope Leo XIII has written some Latin 
verses, my Lord." 

" Yes, but he is not infallible in metre. I 
have found one false quantity. Dr. Butler, of 
Trinity, is the greatest wielder of classic verse 
in the world. He threw Tennyson's ' Crossing 
the Bar' into six different Greek and Latin 
measures." 

Who is your favourite playwright? ' 
iEschylus. He wrote the finest line in poe- 
try, when he played on Helen's name, call- 
ing her Helenas, helandros, heleptolis — bane of 
ship, bane of man, and bane of city! ' 

Is there any Greek irony in the Gospel? ' 
Yes, the verse ' And I, if I be lifted up, 
will draw all men unto me ' is irony, dramatic 
and divine." 






(6 



THE RELIGION OF ENGLAND 101 

Cardinal Logue looked and thought the very 
opposite. Like the Apostles, he came of fisher- 
folk, and his gaunt, bony face with bushy 
brows planted over his sad yet shrewd Celtic 
eyes made him like Granuaile or some such 
weather-battered personification of Ireland in 
a cassock. He too had passed outside politics 
and beyond controversy. He was a link with 
Ireland's penal past. He had outlived his 
generation and filled the sees of Ireland twice 
and three times over with his own hands. He 
told me he had sat on the bishops' bench 
with John MacHale of Tuam, who had been 
a Bishop before Catholic emancipation (1829). 
MacHale died in 1881 and Logue was conse- 
crated in the seventies. 

The interchange of humour and respect 
kept Logue and Alexander friends. When 
Cardinal Vannutelli came to consecrate the 
new cathedral at Armagh, Alexander left a 
card with the Pope's legate. The two cardinals 
paid the Protestant primate a visit. As the 
three old men were gossiping in Latin under 
the roof most sacred to Protestant ascendancy, 
a tumult was heard in the streets, and great 
was their amusement on learning afterward 
that rival religious mobs had begun to break 
windows in their honour. 



102 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Cardinal Logue used to describe the con- 
clave which elected Pius X with some humour 
(now cardinals are forbidden to mention de- 
tails); how he and two others came together 
socially and were mistaken for plotters, which 
they were not at all, at all! And how, had he 
been made Pope, he would have certainly 
jumped out of the window! 

Alexander was the high-water mark of all 
that was best in Anglicanism. He was tolerant 
without being unorthodox. I remember the 
wrath which mantled upon his gentle old face 
after reading a sermon by Dean Hensley Hen- 
son. "He has blasphemed the Mother of 
God!" They were brave words for an Irish 
Primate to utter. 

Alexander was the last of the great pulpit 
orators, comprising the Liddons and the Ma- 
gees, in whose wake came only the sky-squib- 
bers and slang preachers. The slump which 
has been visible in the state has visited the 
Church. The Great War found no single great 
man on the bishops' bench except Gore, of 
Oxford, who, owing to his liberal views, was 
barely on speaking terms with his diocese. 
The archbishoprics were filled by courtiers, 
fashionable in doctrine as in politics. 

When I became a Catholic, Archbishop 



THE RELIGION OF ENGLAND 103 

Alexander sent for me and, after a good-hu- 
moured scolding, added: "I nearly did it myself 
when I was your age !" He told me that al- 
most all his Oxford friends had become Catholic 
priests, but what he mourned was that they 
disappeared. He seemed to think they drifted 
away like wrecks. It is certainly true that 
the Catholic Church made wonderful converts 
in those days. The pick of Oxford followed 
Newman, and what, indeed, happened to them 
all? Save for a Manning or a Ward, they 
were not much heard of again. 

The leading Anglicans are generally laymen. 
Gladstone was a church reader, and tried to 
use his position of premier to make theological 
interruptions during the Vatican council. Only 
the adroitness of his diplomats saved him from 
a foolish position. Lord Ampthill, who pre- 
vented Disraeli from making a speech in bad 
French at the Berlin Congress, saved Glad- 
stone from worse theology in 1870. However, 
Gladstone apologetically sent a British ship- 
of-war to secure the safety of the Pope during 
the fall of the Temporal Power. Lord Hali- 
fax has been described as the lay pope of the 
Church of England. He sacrificed a great 
career to lead the High Church and further 
reunion with the Mother Church of Rome, 



104 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

whom the High Church nicknamed "Aunty," 
and the Low Church "The Scarlet Woman." 
I once heard the present Archbishop of York 
humorously describe her in conversation as 
his Pink Aunt ! 

If Lord Halifax had been in holy orders 
he would have been put into prison or tried 
like the saintly Bishop King for ritualism. 
He has described to me the most thrilling mo- 
ment of his life when he almost induced Leo 
XIII to recognize Anglican Orders. Far more 
ascetic and theological than the bishops he 
vainly endeavours to persuade to live up to 
their Catholic title, he hovers like an ignis 
fatuus between two Churches. He was the 
good influence among Edward VII's fast 
friends in youth. It was Halifax who procured 
the prayers and telegram of Pius IX when the 
prince's life was despaired of. 

At the other pole to Lord Halifax was Lord 
Radstock, who, like the famous Lord Dart- 
mouth, "wears a coronet and prays"! Rad- 
stock was a drawing-room preacher, who 
claimed to have converted the old Emperor 
William. He once went to preach to the god- 
less French, and was heard to entreat them 
publicly: "Buvez de Veau de vie, buvez de Veau 
de vie, mes peresl" He meant the water of 



THE RELIGION OF ENGLAND 105 

life, but the witty French inquired if brandy 
was the English sacrament. 

Religious life in England is at its best in 
dealing with the fcetid slums, which en- 
cumber the great cities of the land. The 
High Church sent out men devoted and true, 
of whom Father Dolling was reckoned an 
Anglican Vincent de Paul. Though disliking 
ritualism, Archbishop Alexander told me he 
once went to confirm some of Dolling's dis- 
ciples in a back slum, who rose up singing 
and pronounced "We are marching to the 
goal" as though it were gaol. "Only too true, 
poor fellows," whispered Dolling, who was an 
Irishman, across the chancel to the Arch- 
bishop. 

England's greatest social and religious dan- 
ger lay in those slums. They remain hotbeds of 
disease and unrest, which are not allayed by 
the efforts of temperance workers on the one 
hand or by bouts of drunken pleasure on the 
other. Born in original gin may be said of 
most slum babies, one-half of whose survivors 
to manhood are found unfit for military service. 
Drops of oil are dropped on the howling ocean 
of greater London. Oxford and Cambridge 
have founded settlements of well-meaning 
students, but critics have reported them as 



106 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

only an expensive way of showing the poor 
how the rich live. Nevertheless, the inculca- 
tion of muscular Christianity by a band of 
stalwarts is not valueless, even if young bur- 
glars are sometimes given the benefit of a gym- 
nastic training ! 

The present Bishop of London sprang to 
fame from Oxford House. Perhaps he is the 
typical modern bishop. For ever photographed 
and paraded in the papers, he can be suave 
and cheery to everybody. He preaches a 
"jolly" theology. He is fonder of making a 
good phrase than points in controversy. He 
could not help describing the Great War as 
"The Nailed Hand versus the Mailed Fist." 
He has no pretensions except what the High 
Church insists on giving him. He slaps his 
curates on the back and calls the working 
man "Mate." He can crack a harmless joke 
about church to show he is a layman, after all, 
and explain to a Londoner that Christ was 
really more of a sportsman than a Sunday- 
school teacher. 

The most successful of his clergy, Preben- 
dary Carlile, once startled us at Cambridge 
by referring to the Good Shepherd from the 
university pulpit as "the Divine Fox-hunter!" 
His Church Army is the one success of modern 



THE RELIGION OF ENGLAND 107 

Anglicanism. When so much gush is spoken 
of Divine love, he showed that its practice 
meant loving the unlovable. To love the 
lovely is easy to gods or men. 

On the whole, England has but a loose hold 
on Christianity, which is left to the individual. 
The Salvation Army men have swept up the 
refuse of her pinchbeck Babylons, but they 
have won their real success as an imperial 
sociological bureau. The High Churches with 
their free gifts and lighted candles dot the 
slums like Christmas trees planted artificially 
in a dreary jungle. It is the system of bribing 
souls which has lost England to the churches. 
Snobbery has driven away the poor. The 
fashionable churches count their coronets, 
and the middle-class chapels advertise their 
carpet-knights. 

The Church of England reigns chiefly as a so- 
cial club, with which are deposited the moral 
standards of society. There are more people in 
London society to-day who believe in their fam- 
ily ghosts than in the resurrection of Christ. 
Superstition has thrived oddly in London, as 
it throve in the later Roman Empire, to the 
disregard of the old-fashioned deities. I have 
known an outgoing governor consult a clair- 
voyant, and ladies who prefer palmists to 



108 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

confessors. And I once attended a seance in 
Grosvenor Square, where the recently deceased 
wife of an Irish viceroy sent messages to her 
friends in society. High personages frequent 
the boudoir of Endor. I suppose there are 
few who have not consulted "Mrs. Robinson," 
the principal witch to London society. The 
most curious superstition prevalent is the use 
Protestant ladies make of St. Anthony of 
Padua to find lost jewels or to help them win 
at bridge. I have even known a relic of that 
much-tried saint used to help a race-horse in 
the Derby. 

The only genuine native expression of reli- 
gion is the much-derided Nonconformist Con- 
science, which is entirely occupied with the 
public care of two commandments. There is 
no reason to consider English public men more 
moral than the French, except that they must 
be careful not to be found out. In France a 
politician's private life is never scanned un- 
less a woman figures in his death, as in the 
sinister cases of Gambetta, Boulanger, and 
President Faure. But in England, public 
men who are caught out in their lifetime 
are hounded to political or actual death. On 
the day of judgment the middle classes of 
England will point very triumphantly to the 



THE RELIGION OF ENGLAND 109 

most prominent scapegoats they succeeded in 
nailing to God's barn door, of whom the no- 
blest and hardest treated was Parnell. 

The English people will always shrink from 
blasphemy and try to keep respectable, but 
it cannot be said that there is a Christian 
England in the sense that there is a Christian 
Russia, or a Christian Ireland. The deep 
religious sense which underlay "Merrie Eng- 
land" seems only likely to return under the 
stress of deep national humiliation and sor- 
row. What, indeed, was asked by the Divine 
Prophet, to whom the Church of England is 
officially dedicated, if ye gain the whole world, 
and lose your own soul ? 



THE POLITICIANS 

The history of modern England is the history 
of English politics. No growth could be more 
native than the legislation of compromise 
through compromise. Though the House of 
Commons has seen a gentlemanly game become 
a class gamble, the system remains a regulated 
contest between those who are in and those 
who are out of power. The object of each is 
to supplant the other with a more popular 
edition of each other's schemes. Once in a 
generation there is a struggle for principles. 
Over the Reform Bill, Home Rule, and the 
House of Lords, men were ready to sacrifice 
their political lives. 

Ever since the Tories were unwise enough 
to support the Stuarts, the great Whig families 
have ruled England. After the Reform Bill 
of 1832, the Whigs took the middle classes 
under their tutelage. After that of 1867, 
Whigs and Tories divided the working men. 
The advent of Irish and Labour parties spoiled 

the game. The old Whigs were a race of 

no 



THE POLITICIANS 111 

material-minded optimists, who had made 
their idea of liberty a tyrannous fetich. The 
Tories remained a secluded class, whose 
haughty pessimism was only relieved by oc- 
casional and adventurous bids for power. 
The modern Liberal is a humanised and vul- 
garised Whig. He has continued a domestic 
sentiment for aboriginal races and the foreign 
policy, which enabled England to lord Europe 
without having to pay or fight for the privilege. 
They are the class whom Napoleon gibed for 
shopkeepers, and shop they have kept ever 
since under divine and sometimes royal pat- 
ronage. But the Liberals were no hypocrites 
in going to war for Belgium. " Suffer the lit- 
tle nations " was a Gladstonian text, though 
Parnell complained that Ireland was forgotten. 
I heard a leading statesman whisper that the 
German invasion of Belgium inclined him to 
believe in the Divine government of the 
universe. Nothing less could have brought 
in John Bull. 

The Conservative party is built upon an 
outvoted squirarchy and a state Church which 
is in a minority in the state. As a political 
force they have held terms of power, thanks 
to wars and war scares. They have placed 
their trust in brilliant adventures ever since 



112 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Jacobite days, and they have maintained the 
pomp and prestige of Empire. 

Out of the brilliant "Young England" 
episode they drew Disraeli. They suffered 
his leadership as the price of political victory, 
as later they underwent complete collapse for 
the sake of another novus homo, Chamberlain. 
Disraeli's career was a romance such as no 
Eastern vizier or Western plutocrat could tell. 
He began as a pioneer in dress and an sesthete 
of words. It was Disraeli, and not Oscar Wilde, 
who wrote: "I like a sailor's life much, though 
it spoils the toilette!" Wilde wrote his life 
into plays, but Disraeli was his own actor. 
Wilde accused nature of copying literature, 
but Disraeli actually made his novels come 
true. In Tancred, written in the thirties, he 
described the military occupation of Cyprus 
which he carried out as a prime minister 
forty years later. As a Jew he had no com- 
punction in threatening white Russia with 
black Indians on behalf of an Asiatic power 
like Turkey. It was a striking but accursed 
policy to bring Indian troops to Europe. Un- 
fortunately, it took root, and we have heard 
a Minister threaten "Gurkhas to Potsdam." 
That a Christian Kaiser has enlisted Islam 
against fellow Christians cannot excuse a 



THE POLITICIANS 113 

breach of this — the true Aryan heresy. Who- 
soever pits black against white — should be 
anathema! There is one Aryan race and 
Christ is its prophet! 

Disraeli alternately flattered and fascinated 
England. He began his career by writing a 
revolutionary epic in the plains of Troy, and 
he ended by capping the solemn British Con- 
stitution with an Oriental tiara. The day of 
his death was added as "Primrose Day" to 
the national calendar, while Gladstone's was 
forgotten though it coincided with Ascension 
Day. Disraeli's mantle was divided between 
Salisbury and Randolph Churchill. The for- 
mer continued his foreign policy, while ad- 
mitting that Disraeli had "backed the wrong 
horse" in supporting Turkey. Randolph 
Churchill inherited and perfected the ideal of 
Tory democracy. He made himself "Young 
England" rampant, and he troubled the right- 
eous Gladstone sore. 

Of Randolph Churchill I have a slight 
memory. He was my uncle by marriage, and 
I was his first godson. He had married an 
American in days when such an alliance was 
considered as experimental as mating with 
Martians. There was a conservative suspi- 
cion against American wives, but Randolph be- 



114 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

longed to the noble army of Progressives. His 
career was too brilliant to be lasting. I only 
remember him as the fallen ex-Chancellor given 
over to haunting regrets and unattainable de- 
sires. He scarcely noticed the presence of 
children in the house. 

In those days Winston was a fearless sandy- 
haired youth occupied with the custody of a 
moated stronghold called "the den" and the 
drilling of a dozen nervous boys. For Winston 
his father always used the dimissory mood. 
Yet few sons have done more for their fathers. 
But Randolph was not responsible for his 
inability to appreciate Winston's budding 
genius. He was suffering an agonising decline 
from the political world in which he once had 
his whole being. The story has been told 
with dispassionate pathos in Winston's Life 
of his father — perhaps the greatest filial trib- 
ute in the English language. No antagonist 
could have passed Randolph's steel but his 
own reckless blade. Like a political Saul, he 
fell finally upon his own weapon. Vain trips 
were made to Africa, Asia, and America, but 
health and balance were denied to a brain 
still winged with genius and weighted with 
its ambitions. The collapse of an aeroplane 
in mid-air is always more terrible than the 



THE POLITICIANS 115 

overturning of a hackney-cab in the street. 
Randolph fell from meteoric heights, and 
men wondered as much as they pitied. 

In the schoolroom at home we tasted 
strange fruits, like the fruits of the Bible, 
which he brought back from his travels, and 
the youngest of us played with Oriental dolls he 
remembered to buy for us. During his dying 
dash through Japan he purchased whole em- 
poriums with the magnificence of the reputed 
milord. Eccentric though he became, it is 
said that the Orientals did not find him madder 
than other Englishmen ! I do not know any- 
thing nobler than his wife's devotion during 
his agony. Together with a doctor she ac- 
companied him on that nightmare trip round 
the world, exposed to the lynx eyes of the 
press and the subtler advances of disease. 
She attended him to dinners, where he was 
liable to substitute well-known truths for 
conventional courtesies in his speech, and she 
cheerfully crossed the tropical seas, when it 
was necessary to include a leaden casket 
among their baggage. I cannot withhold 
this tribute to my aunt, though she has since 
achieved more mundane fame as the editor 
of the first Magazine de luxe, as a playwright, 
and the captain of a hospital ship. 



116 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Early in 1895 Randolph returned, and died 
amid a burst of sympathy such as was ac- 
corded to Byron, whose genius he resembled 
in some ways. Endowed with brilliances of 
verse and speechcraft respectively, they were 
the spendthrifts of their own minds. In- 
tractable to would-be superiors, contemptuous 
of native stupidity, and careless of conventions, 
they amazed a bourgeois England. Rejected 
at home, they were hailed as dazzling types of 
their race abroad. Keenly alive to adventure, 
they trailed the bleeding pageant of their 
lives overseas. Finally, they wore themselves 
out in impossible causes — Byron in the at- 
tempt to achieve freedom for a worthless 
Greece, and Randolph in the yet forlorner 
hope of associating genius with the policy of 
the Tory party. 

The people loved Randolph because he was 
domineering, utterly fearless, and a little un- 
scrupulous. As a schoolboy he had shown 
the same traits. At Eton he had three fags 
whom he used to summon by a system of 
knocks on the floor — one for Trower, two for 
Freer (my informant), and three for Beres- 
ford-Pierce. He ordered Freer once to write 
out some lines he had incurred as a punish- 
ment. As a result, Freer could not do his own 



THE POLITICIANS 117 

work and appealed to his fagmaster. Ran- 
dolph sent for all available Greek and Latin 
lexicons, and, secreting Freer at the bottom 
of the stairs, hurled himself down with the 
lexicons and disappeared. Result — the Dame 
ran out and found Freer suffering from an 
apparent accident which incapacitated him 
from going into school, but not from writing 
out Randolph's lines. 

In many senses Randolph was not a Vic- 
torian statesman, but he knew how to em- 
ploy a tart and careless truth of speech, which 
often made Gladstone's involved wisdom ap- 
pear more involved and less wise. In France 
he could have played the part of a Boulanger, 
and in America, perhaps that of a Roosevelt, 
who has certainly tried to make his party as 
Progressive as Randolph wished to make his. 
Similarly, both found refreshment in African 
hunting trips, which each described by letter 
to a wondering world. Though he mocked all 
that was dear to bourgeoisie, he came nearer 
than any of his generation to the "Merrie 
England," which, deep under Puritanism and 
the Nonconformist Conscience, still underlies 
English character. He was not abashed to 
call his fellow Ministers, W. H. Smith and 
Lord Cross, "Marshall and Snelgrove," or to 



118 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

brand Gladstone as "the Moloch of Midlo- 
thian." His dream was for the old-fashioned 
Tory party to be sustained by the votes of the 
crowds who vibrated to his voice. But from 
Tory democracy both his party and himself 
came to be disillusioned, and when he slipped 
his own legions trod him underfoot. With cyn- 
ical candour Salisbury accepted his resignation, 
because, as he said, he had always thought 
him mad. 

I can remember Salisbury at the memorial 
service for Randolph in Westminster. He 
seemed only to need a white ruff and a velvet 
doublet to become one of those Elizabethan 
statesmen who knew so well when to wait 
and when to act, when to bite and when to 
swallow — whose speech sounded most generous 
when it was most ironic. An Abbey requiem 
is the most impressive rite left to England. 
The organ tones seem to touch the statues of 
the mighty dead to attention, and for a mo- 
ment the dull glow of tapers casts a flicker 
upon their viewless eyes — as yet another mem- 
ory is added to their oblivion. 

Randolph had foreseen some such scene in 
a cynical mood, and had even prophesied 
what a charming letter Gladstone would write 
to his widow proposing burial in the Abbey. 
He was happier buried near Blenheim. 



THE POLITICIANS 119 

And here it may be noted as a characteristic 
of dying chivalry in English politics that no 
one paid more deference or attention to Ran- 
dolph's last broken speeches than his old rival, 
Gladstone. It may be recalled that when 
Lord Tweedmouth suffered mental breakdown 
while speaking in the Lords on Campbell- 
Bannerman's death no one in politics or the 
press took the slightest advantage. 

The Tory party could raise no new star 
after Randolph until they adopted Chamber- 
lain, an ex-Republican, who had shocked their 
fathers even more than Disraeli had amused 
their grandfathers. His advent followed a cu- 
rious sequence. When Dilke and Chamber- 
lain together formed Gladstone's radical wing, 
they could pull the old man unto restiveness. 
A fateful divorce case dislodged Dilke from 
public life, and Chamberlain found himself less 
powerful alone. He was glad of the Home- 
Rule issue to change parties, but his subse- 
quent policy of tariff reform ruined both him- 
self and his new party. It was not tariff 
reform so much as imperial unity which sprang 
from the Boer War. Chamberlain, who be- 
gan as a Unitarian Sunday-school teacher, 
brought down the pillars of the House of Lords 
in his fall. Tragic ends befell the last of the 
Victorian statesmen — Churchill, Parnell, Dilke, 



120 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

and Chamberlain. Failure grim and even 
ghastly clouded their last phases. Chamber- 
lain, the last of them, died melodramatically a 
few weeks before the Great War was to test 
the Empire he had dreamed to make an Em- 
pire. 

Churchill and Chamberlain bequeathed their 
sons to the Tory party. It would be difficult 
to say which created the greatest difficulty 
to that party — Winston Churchill by leaving 
or Austen Chamberlain by remaining. Win- 
ston I knew ever since he was the enfant terrible 
of a home circle. As a boy he was untidy, un- 
manageable, and quick of speech. When he 
returned from Harrow with a torn jacket he 
replied to all remonstrance: "How should I 
not be out of elbows, when my father is out 
of office?" His adventurous spirit fastened 
on King Solomon's Mines as his favourite 
reading. He read it twelve times, and once 
drove its author haggard in the course of a 
cross-examination. "What did you mean?" 
he insisted on one disputed point, and the 
author confessed he did not know himself. 
Once Winston was taken to the Tower of 
London, but declined both train or bus as too 
prosaic means of conveyance. Finally he sent 
cheerful word home that he had started "with 



THE POLITICIANS 121 

a drunken cabman and a frisky horse !" The 
secret of his soul is adventure. 

Though his Harrow Master, Bishop Weldon, 
prophesied his future success just as Bishop 
Sam Wilberforce had prophesied it of Ran- 
dolph, Winston learned as little at Harrow as 
his father at Eton. He showed his typical 
courage there by embracing his old nurse 
amid the mockery of the school. Under his 
fighting mask he has always carried a generous 
heart. I think he was the only Minister of 
the Crown who wept in the House at the dec- 
laration of war. 

He was self-educated, for he was never sent 
to a University. He went into the army, and 
taught himself literature and history in his 
tent at night during his campaigns — of which 
he rapidly saw four on three continents. 
During the Boer War he came down to Eton 
and gave me the best advice I have ever heard 
on education: "Do not turn your mind into 
a damned ammunition wagon, but into a 
rifle to fire off other people's ammunition." 
When he entered politics, journalism lost a 
vivid pen. The combination of American and 
Marlborough blood across the ages produced 
what might have been a super war corre- 
spondent. No individual in the cabinet knew 



122 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

the smack and taste of war as Winston, who 
was one of the few Englishmen who could 
appreciate Mary Johnston's wonderful im- 
pressionist novel of the American Civil War — 
Cease Firing. He found it so true to war's de- 
tails that he could not understand how a 
woman could have written it. 

His career is the most brilliant in recent 
politics. The best English politicians are 
necessarily adventurers. They can only enter 
the lists after single duel with the largest 
antagonist in sight. Disraeli sought out Peel, 
Randolph Churchill challenged Gladstone, 
Lloyd George won fame by bearding Cham- 
berlain in his den, and Winston fastened 
mercilessly on Balfour. He mocked him out 
of office perhaps a little bitterly, remembering 
his father's desertion. His father called Glad- 
stone "an old man in a hurry" in the same 
mood that Winston compared Balfour in polit- 
ical rout to Charley's Aunt — "still running." 

Winston passed from Colonial to Home Of- 
fice, and from Home Office to Admiralty. He 
joined the Admiralty a "little navyite," but 
he immediately adopted serious views on sea 
power. He devoted himself to testing sub- 
marines rather than "teasing goldfish," as 
he called his attacks on plutocracy. Intimate 



THE POLITICIANS 123 

friends noticed a change in his character. 
Thought succeeded ebullition, and he was 
the first of the cabinet to read the writing on 
the wall of the world. Three years before the 
war he confessed his fears in private. I re- 
member once at lunch comparing the Persian 
menace in Greek history to the German 
scare. Instantly his face hardened. 

He returned from the German manoeuvres, 
which he witnessed as the Kaiser's guest, with 
one grim comment on his lips: "I can only 
thank God there is a sea between England 
and that army!" Some have since seen 
reason to give thanks that he had the super- 
vision of that sea. 

There were public prophets like Roberts 
and Beresford, who shouted their alarms from 
the housetops, but the public treated their 
speech as it always does the speech of Irishmen. 
Only in time of war are the Irish of serious 
account. Beresford's epigram — "battleships 
are cheaper than battles" — was surely worth 
considering. The German war scare, dating 
from 1900, fell flat in England because people 
remembered a similar French scare as well as 
the cry of "Bear" which had been raised once 
too often in the seventies against Russia. 

At the Admiralty Winston found there were 



124 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

closer watchers and more interested critics 
scrutinising him than any at home. Not for 
nothing were codes stolen and ships dogged 
by spies from sea to sea. He realised what 
was coming, and he had just the time, though 
not all the support, necessary to put the grand 
fleet in order for the day. 

His contribution to the national defence 
was the only part which on trial proved pre- 
pared. I remember passing through the Ad- 
miralty and the War Office consecutively in 
August, 1914. The latter seemed in a state of 
chaotic confusion, the passages choked with 
supernumerary clerks writing and feeding be- 
hind screens. The Admiralty was like a silent 
morgue. Only an occasional messenger passed 
down the corridors. In the midst sat the 
Lords of Admiralty before a board with the 
positions of the ships marked in miniature 
upon the seven seas beneath the gigantic 
wireless that communicated with them in 
as many minutes. 

If Winston had died on the day the fleet 
was mobilised, he would have fulfilled his 
ambition, which had been to enjoy a decade 
of power and achievement. He used to say 
sadly of the spiritual side of life for which he 
had so little time: "One world is enough at 



THE POLITICIANS 125 

a time." Though no devotee, he was reverent 
because he had imagination. After his escape 
from prison in Pretoria he confessed: "There 
is a God that looks after Winston." Religious 
intolerance was as distasteful to him as of- 
ficial stupidity, and he found enough of both 
in each of his parties. 

In the day of achievement he was replaced 
for unknown reasons, possibly not unassociated 
with public clamour. There was something 
very generous in the welcome he gave to Bal- 
four, his father's old supplanter and twenty- 
five years later his. Randoph Churchill had 
once written from political exile: "So Arthur 
Balfour is really leader and Tory democracy is 
at an end." Winston could have noted in his 
father's words: "After all, A. B. cannot beat 
my record." 

Only dire extremity induced the Liberals 
to call Lord Lansdowne and Balfour out of 
retirement — a historic pair. If Lord Lans- 
downe was really the last of the Whigs, there 
were reasons for regarding Balfour as the last 
of the Tories. The Tory leader, Bonar Law, 
was a colonial, and real Tories are born not 
imported. Lansdowne found himself excusing 
the official nightmare as the South African 
disasters fifteen years before. In 1900 Arnold 



126 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

White wrote in Efficiency and Empire of a 
supposed European war: 

Our institutions would have been found wanting. We 
should have listened to Lord Lansdowne . . . revealing the 
fact of his being "struck'' with our deficiencies. In that case 
we should have had our Colenso, our Stormberg, and Magers- 
fontein on a larger scale. 

Fifteen years have brought them on a colos- 
sal scale. Few things have been more pathetic 
than Balfour and Lansdowne recalled from 
grass to drag the clumsy plough of coalition. 

English history is an automatic repeater. 
The same character under similar circum- 
stances produces the same results. Mr. Wing- 
field Stratford, the most patriotic of historians, 
compared the England of the Crimean War 
with that of the eighteenth-century wars with 
Spain and found "the same swaggering con- 
fidence, the same choice of a safe enemy . . . 
a reluctant chief Minister, the same criminal 
unreadiness for war." It was to be the same 
before 1914. Asquith was as reluctant to go 
to war with Germany as his prototype Aber- 
deen had been to attack Russia. It was Win- 
ston Churchill and Haldane who convinced 
the cabinet of the necessity of war in 1914. 
But the old tradition to be unprepared and 
to neglect warning had remained. From the 



THE POLITICIANS 127 

Hundred Years' War to Waterloo all Eng- 
land's wars had pivoted on the Low Coun- 
tries, yet at her height of world supremacy she 
was unable to save Belgium at her gates. 
Antwerp from being a bolt in the blue should 
have exercised her strategy ever since Glad- 
stone wrote to his War Minister in 1870: "What 
I should like is to study the means of sending 
twenty thousand men to Antwerp with as 
much promptitude as at the Trent affair we 
sent ten thousand men to Canada." 

But England has preferred to send be- 
lated expeditions to meet disasters elsewhere. 
Neither the old-fashioned Whigs nor Tories 
were responsible for the government which 
faced the war. It was a middle-class collec- 
tion with some help from Jews and Celts. 
A bourgeoisie is only effective under piping 
conditions of peace, but war requires a mili- 
tary aristocracy. It is not wise to abolish 
feudalism from civilisation, while leaving its 
close relative, war, on the horizon. 

The English political system has attracted 
lawyers rather than business men. The glib 
tongue is even more successful than the ready 
purse. Part of the political game is to be able 
to prove that whitewashed blackness is nearer 
white than black. Transferred to a scene 



128 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

where traditions and business sense can be 
discounted, great lawyers quickly become great 
politicians. The turning-point in English his- 
tory found an English, a Welsh, a Scotch, and a 
Jewish lawyer taking turns at the wheel — As- 
quith, Lloyd George, Haldane, and Isaacs. 

Since the opening of the century, the Em- 
pire had prayed for a great man, and though 
Lloyd George gave the sound and Grey af- 
fected the silence of one — the Empire still 
prays. Lloyd George, like O'Connell before 
him, was the Celt harrowing Saxon institu- 
tions. Grey was the trump-card and the 
mystery man of the cabinet. The peace of 
Europe seemed involved in his discretion. 
"Straightforwardness" was always put for- 
ward, and deservedly, as his virtue. But a 
time has come when people have begun to ask 
if straightforwardness is all they required of 
their diplomatists or sheer courage the only 
needful of the soldier. There was an old 
teacher of Mathematics at Cambridge who 
used to counsel "a little low cunning" in 
meeting problems. Had Grey really the abil- 
ity to foresee and the patriotism to realise that 
England would never have a better chance 
to' defeat Germany ? Or was he only a diplo- 
matic angler adrift, casting a feverish but 



THE POLITICIANS 129 

lucky fly over the Balkan eddy? A time has 
since come when his position in the Balkans 
has been compared to "Parsival at a poker 
party." Whether he foresaw events or not, he 
suffered them to do the work. He has the 
credit for having licked the entente into shape 
after it had been swaddled by Edward VII. 
Between them they prepared, though they did 
not plot, side-currents leading to the Great 
War. History will decide which, or whether 
either, can claim to be called " Edward the 
Peacemaker." But Grey's fellow countrymen 
will forgive him, for lying is not a national tal- 
ent, and they have since taken to heart the 
most succinct sentence in Carlyle — "Diplo- 
macy is clouds: beating of your enemies is 
land and sea." 

In default of the heaven-sent, Herbert As- 
quith led. Brilliantly read, practical, and 
legally argumentative, he was the exemplar 
of Jowett of Balliol. He harnessed the Non- 
conformist Conscience and Free Trade to a 
rumbling old doctrinaire coach, if not to a 
fiery chariot — and in it he drove through the 
Lords and over the Union. A plain, blunt 
man fit to rule, but not particularly inspired to 
save an Empire — without much enthusiasm or 
humour to spare. Very symbolic is the story 



130 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

told of him at an entertainment of French 
delegates. Asquith wore the uniform of an 
elder brother of Trinity House, which drew a 
query from a visitor. The incarnation of Eng- 
lish Dissent explained: " Je suis le frere aine 
de la Trinite!" The Frenchman bowed po- 
litely and said: "Ah — nous n'avons jpas ga 
en France !" 

Asquith may be judicially stupid, but he is 
never unreasonably foolish. He refuses to be 
unbalanced, for he keeps his footing to his 
own subjects. He is suspicious of dreamers, 
especially of the fervid company of "cranks 
and Christs." He only respects what he can 
understand. Everything else appears to him 
like so much froth on the changeful tide of 
the world. He could not appreciate Ulster's 
ideal, or the imperial dream of the Jingo, or 
the sentiment of the Catholic. He offended 
them all mortally. He would not allow the 
latter the simple satisfaction of carrying the 
Host through the London streets, and he 
underestimated the soul of the Ulster Prot- 
estants. I remember his cynical remark on 
hearing of Archbishop Alexander's dream of 
reunion with Rome: "He must be in his 
dotage." His branch of oratory has been de- 
scribed as "a plain tale without any mis- 



THE POLITICIANS 131 

sionary fervour," which could apply equally 
to his life. He has the English prejudice 
against missionaries, whether of creeds or tar- 
iffs. Decency without humbug is his motto. 
His choice of Bridges for Laureate was as 
typical as his selection of Lang for Archbishop. 
In each case he chose culture without mysti- 
cism. 

Yet his lack of imagination proved a strength 
more than a weakness. He was not aghast 
or appalled at Armageddon occurring during 
his administration. He measured events and 
men from the law courts, and the unveiling of 
history was to him like a political panorama. 
Common sense and practical wisdom upheld 
a man to whom the splendour of failure, the 
idealism of the fanatic, and death for a dream 
meant little. It was not in his blood or in 
his upbringing. His college teacher, Jowett, 
had mocked Newman, and his political leader, 
Gladstone, betrayed Gordon. Yet these two, 
Gordon and Newman, were the sweetest Eng- 
lish gentlemen that ever trod the earth, for 
whose sake many have tried to love a some- 
what unlovable race. 

Life brought Asquith great successes without 
sharp trials. His son repeated his success at 
Oxford. A most brilliant hostess became his 



132 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

wife. Ireland, Wales, and Jewry bent their 
necks to uphold his administration. In vain 
Socialist, Suffragette, and Carsonite raged 
about his feet. Asquith's easy-chair seemed 
to roll above the water-floods. 

With perfect equanimity he faced the World 
War. When the hearts of others were failing 
them for wrath or fear, he took his glass of 
wine and played his rubber of bridge after the 
day's work. He had the common sense to 
know that teetotalism will not vanquish the 
Hun. He retained mental elasticity and per- 
formed his allotted business as usual. He knew 
perfectly well that he was for the time irre- 
placeable. There are two public men whom 
the Great War cannot change much, and who 
were perhaps born to see England through her 
trouble — the lineal descendant of "Farmer 
George" and the favourite disciple of Ben- 
jamin Jowett. 



IRELAND AND THE IRISH 

To write of Ireland among English institu- 
tions seems a bull or as the Greeks called it, an 
oxymoron (sharp folly). Nevertheless, Eng- 
land would not be what she is without Ireland. 
For good or for bad, for sunshine or for rain 
(chiefly the latter), England and Ireland seem 
doomed to cross-entanglement, with their pres- 
ent continually marred in the future by each 
other's past. 

Whatever political trouble the Irish cause 
and however many prizes of church or state 
are taken by the Scotch, the English owe 
much to the Celtic fringe. Celtic influences 
have purged the Anglo-Saxon of much original 
Teutonism. Religion, and later the sporting 
spirit, passed from the Celt into England. As 
horse-racing came from Ireland, so golf, the 
grandmother of cricket, came from Scotland. 
It is symbolic of Irish influences that at one 
time the names of the leading jockeys and 
Jesuits in England were drawn from the same 
clans — Rickaby and Maher. 

Ireland is a paradox. The sages say there 

133 



134 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

are three paradoxes which shall never be un- 
derstood — the Trinity, Woman, and Ireland, 
but the greatest paradox is Ireland. She is 
the exception to all rules. She is the most 
distressful and yet the most easily contented 
country. She is the most Catholic in creed, 
and in her folk-lore the most pagan country 
in Europe. Her people are the most feudal, 
and yet they produced O'Connell the creator 
of all modern democracy. They are accused 
of failing economically under both free trade 
and protection. They are accused of building 
too many Catholic cathedrals, but in Dublin 
they have been indicted for not building one 
— (as though they intended to take back 
the Protestant erection). In sum, witnesses 
against them disagree, for Ireland remains the 
home of the unexpected. It is only during a 
strike that Irish streets present any signs of 
activity. She was the only country to in- 
crease her population as the result of being a 
belligerent in a European war. When gloom 
obscured the world, Ireland became "the one 
bright spot." Nevertheless, it took a war of 
nations to bring Irish factions out of that at- 
mosphere of suspicion and rancour in which 
Irish life is lived. Professor Jackson of Cam- 
bridge, after serving on the Irish University 



IRELAND AND THE IRISH 135 

question, told us he had made four discoveries 
in Ireland: 

1. That everything is a secret. 

2. That Englishmen are honest fools. 

3. That everybody is suspect. 

4. That the best whisky is kept in Ireland. 

Behind the factions and the politics of Ire- 
land live a remnant of those who still speak 
the Irish tongue. On the Kerry borders, the 
Connemara bogs, and the Donegal Highlands 
lingers the oldest vernacular speech in Europe. 
Gaelic was spoken when Caesar landed in Brit- 
ain. Compared to Gaelic, English is a mongrel 
without a syntax. An Irish scholar laughs at 
the inflection of English verbs much as the 
English make fun of a Chinaman's pidgin- 
English. 

The Irish speakers may be illiterate, but 
their wisdom is older than printing. Theirs 
is a week which dedicates no day to Thor. 
They know the stars by unclassical names. 
Even the Pole-star (of the Northmen sailors) 
is "the Star of Knowledge" (of the Celtic 
Druids) to them. Orion's Belt in Irish Ireland 
is "the King's Wand." I once collected names 
by which the stars were known in Ireland be- 
fore the Norman invasion from an old woman 
living between Muckish and Errigal moun- 



136 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

tains. She was afterward in trouble for selling 
illicit liquor, but she had the "old knowledge" 
as it is called. In that part of Ireland the folk 
live in an atmosphere of fairy. Their affec- 
tions are barely earthly, for they leave mar- 
riages to be fixed by the priest. The passion- 
ate go to America or take to drink, for their 
women have beauty and not fire. The Ave 
Maria has frozen their lips. But the folk have 
humour and bitterness and religious ecstasies 
and fierce sports to fill the emotional cup 
which other peoples sacrifice at one fell swoop 
to lust. Because lust was not good enough, 
the Celt invented romance. The Church, like 
a wise old mother, has not interfered much 
with their custom and legend. In Gaeldom 
superstition is lost in imagination, and there 
is sometimes slight difference between charm 
and prayer, except that charms are always for 
temporal needs. In an Irish household there 
is a hereditary prayer for milking the kine, 
another for raking the ashes over the hearth 
fire, which is never allowed to go out. There 
are prayers at bed-making or at catching sight 
of the sun. There are formal benedictions for 
taking snuff or for picking herbs. Until the 
day of the dispensary doctor the Irish had a 
fairy pharmacopoeia. If they did use fox oil 



IRELAND AND THE IRISH 137 

or a burnt swallow, the cures were not less 
numerous than under modern conditions. In 
the dark corners of cabins, in deserted lanes, 
and by Druid wells the old ranns can still be 
heard. It is only the old people who were 
born before the great famine swept Ireland to 
the bone, who have the "old knowledge.' ' An 
old man, the last story-teller of his townland, 
once showed me the blood charm, warning me 
never to put it to paper. He could stop a 
horse from bleeding as easy as he could blow 
the froth from it. I knew an eldest son of an 
eldest son, who was visited by people from 
Belfast to be charmed of their warts, and an 
old shepherd, nearly a hundred years old, who 
rubbed men and sheep for "the rose" (ery- 
sipelas) . 

In the Gaelic tradition every flower and beast 
was remembered for the part it played in the 
Passion. Peasants still spare the beetle that 
put the soldiers off the Lord's track, and re- 
mark that the midges bite sharp since they 
ate Judas ! Still they shudder at the curlew — 
the Juif errant of the moors — that once mocked 
Calvary. If the curlew's cry is that of a lost 
soul, the cheery chanticleer, who proclaims 
some such inanity as "cock-a-doodle-doo" to 
the Saxon world, calls with every dawn to the 



138 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

reverent Gael: "Mac an oiyer slaun!" (the 
Son of the Virgin is safe). 

Love of animals in Ireland is not confined 
to the horse. The Irish saints admitted fox 
and badger as monks into their communities. 
There were two modern bishops who took 
their reverent dogs into their cathedrals, of 
whom one was Archbishop Croke, the dread 
of English statesmen. When he lay dying dur- 
ing Holy Week of 1902, his pet dog entered 
and sat solemnly on his empty throne between 
the vested canons during the service of Tene- 
brse. To those present it seemed a solemn 
sign of death. A thousand years previously 
St. Columba's death was foretold by his old 
white horse. Philosophies change, but things 
that are stranger than philosophies do not. 

Very curious customs surround the dead in 
Ireland of which "the wake" and "the keen" 
have been plagiarised and debased by writers. 
They all spring from the Celtic belief (older 
than St. Patrick) that the dead do not die. 
Tobacco-pipes are often left on graves in- 
stead of wreaths, and at old-fashioned wakes 
offerings of snuff are piled on the body of the 
corpse, from which each friend takes a pinch. 
Hence the familiar greeting of old folk ex- 
changing snuff: "I never took a better pinch 



IRELAND AND THE IRISH 139 

off the navel" — followed by the time-honoured 
response: "May the souls of all yours rest in 
peace by the grace of God." 

There are a number of funeral games re- 
served for wake nights such as "Boxing the 
Connaughtman" and "the Sitting Brogue." 
As the hours of night pass, the living forget 
the dead and dance, for to the Celts life and 
death are as one. A priest told me once of 
an old beggar woman who died in a ditch in 
his parish. Of their charity the neighbours 
waked her for three merry nights — till the 
next townland felt lonesome, and begged the 
loan of the body for a dance themselves. It 
was high time before the priest had her buried. 
This spirit has reached the upper classes, for 
on a famous occasion an Irish peer celebrated 
the opening of a family vault by a county 
ball ! The priests have suppressed wakes and 
keening lately. I heard a pathetic story of a 
priest who officially forbade the keen. Then 
his brother was drowned and "he let the piti- 
fulest, beautifulest keen ever heard in the 
parish." The people have the quaint and 
weird colouring in them that is too often 
bleached by civilisation. The invisible seems 
the more likely to their untutored minds, and 
the temporal not to be depended upon. All 



140 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

current Irish philosophy is summed in the 
saying, "It will all be the same in a hundred 
years" — which in its most important aspect 
is true. The universal answer to "What is the 
time?" is "Time enough." Only a people 
who have banked in eternity can afford to 
waste their time. 

Mystery and beauty still stalk the land. 
I knew a woman whose child was drowned in 
a well, and the child used to pull her skirt 
every time she went to draw water. She used 
to touch barrenness with a twig of enchanted 
blackthorn. She had other children who be- 
came prosperous in New York. Only two 
generations separate the cultured Irish-Amer- 
ican millionaire from the poor but God-loved 
race who habited Ireland "from the Flood to 
the Famine." 

As the old Irish tongue died out, there arose 
a literary compassion in England which took 
the form of a Celtic movement. A school of 
writers arose who made literary capital by 
belauding or belittling, libelling or labelling 
the Irish. Thanks to an audience of the 
middle class fleeing from English Teutonism 
and Philistinism, these writers won a cockney 
fame. Only Yeats deserved laurelled rank, 
though he was not an Irish poet at all, so 



IRELAND AND THE IRISH 141 

much as a Rossetti lost in what old writers 
called "a Druidical mist." The only other 
figure in the movement was Synge, who, in 
his masterpiece, grafted a glorified dialect of 
Anglo-Irish to an absurd plot. His "Playboy" 
infuriated native audiences who had expected 
an Irish D'Artagnan or Quixote from him at 
least. The Playboy only tried "to kill his 
dad with a loy," but parricides are unknown 
in Ireland, though I remember one unfortunate 
enough to shoot his father accidentally. He 
was always called "Bagdad," with that Irish 
felicity for nicknames which called an agent, 
who was being perpetually missed, "Wood- 
cock!" 

There are fine phrases in Synge. Who can 
forget — "a young gaffer would capsize the 
stars," or "coaching through Limbo!" But 
they were not Anglo-Irish, so much as pseudo- 
Shakespearian. George Russell (A. E.) is the 
real Irish poet. Oddly enough the last of the 
Bards is also the first Irish Communist. 

Ireland is a land where a few leading men 
in politics or literature are ever playing to 
the gallery of the gods. The people them- 
selves seem only happy when Heaven and 
earth are listening to their dissensions. There 
are fixed sides on political, religious, and 



142 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

literary questions between which there is no 
place for canvass or conversion. Celtic gram- 
mar can be as fierce a question as Home Rule. 
Ireland is a house divided against itself. If 
one side of the house went under, the other 
side would have lost its sounding-board. 

I shall never forget or regret contesting 
Derry City as a Nationalist in 1910. Mr. 
Redmond launched me with a classical speech 
upon the maelstrom. Nobody cared a straw 
for free trade or taxes, for home or foreign 
policy. I lost a stand-up religious faction 
fight by small majorities. The halt, the dying, 
and the dead came to the poll. One voter died 
trying to vote for me and a funeral-wreath fig- 
ured in my election expenses. I retired later 
in favour of my chief Protestant supporter, 
David Hogg, and the seat was won for Home 
Rule. Hogg was perhaps the last of the ex- 
tinct race of Radical Ulstermen who stood the 
siege of Derry and won the battle of Bunker 
Hill — in each case against an English king. 

But so fierce was the feeling evolved by the 
Carson campaign that Protestants would not 
receive the sacrament where Home Rulers of- 
ficiated. It is difficult for any one who has not 
been behind the scenes of an Ulster election 
to realise the Mohammedan hatred of the 



IRELAND AND THE IRISH 143 

Cross among Orangemen, or the holy horror 
among Catholics for a "black Protestant." 
An Irishman's vote is decided at baptism and 
remains so until death polls all "beneath the 
Green." I believe my rival was brought to 
canvass the vote of the local "holy man." 
Somebody inquired the nature of his holiness. 
"Well, he just sits there all day and curses the 
Pope!" 

No power less than German bayonets could 
bring these stubborn peoples together. 

The division in Ireland is religious and 
not racial. There are as many Celts in the 
Orange ranks as there are of old Norman and 
Cromwellian blood among the Catholic Na- 
tionalists. An O'Kane used to lead the Orange- 
men, and it was an O'Flanagan who urged the 
Protestants "to kick the Queen's Crown into 
the Boyne" rather than be disestablished. 

The secret of English misrule is that only 
Irishmen can understand the Irish. George 
Wyndham was the only fit ruler England ever 
sent to Ireland. Descended from the mar- 
tyred Lord Edward Fitzgerald, catholic- 
minded, a soldier, and an editor of poetry, he 
seemed one born to solve the Irish question. 
He was the first Irish Secretary to visit a Na- 
tionalist member in his home. Unfortunately, 



144 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

for his generous and sanguine nature he was 
assailed by the lower clamour of his own party 
and, when in difficulties, politely abandoned 
by Balfour. I met him on his civilising tour 
amongst Ulster landlords. I can recall the 
tones of dreamy persuasiveness with which he 
urged his scheme of Devolution or disguised 
Home Rule to them, and they wondering to 
what devilment he was up. His grief, when 
betrayed by men who thought indeed he was 
betraying them, was terrible. His tears were 
not those of a baffled politician, but of a de- 
feated idealist. When he fell from office he 
wrote a beautiful letter, unprinted as yet, in 
which he recognised that Ireland's Messiahs 
must be stoned like those of any other country. 
His was not the first nor will it be the last 
heart to be broken for love of Ireland. 

In Ireland as in chemistry the most in- 
nocuous subjects are liable to become ex- 
plosives when mixed. Religion and politics 
form unfortunately the commonest example of 
such combinations. Sir Horace Plunkett re- 
pelled the Danish invader from the butter 
market, but unfortunately mixed bad theol- 
ogy with good economics in his famous book. 
There was a clerical explosion. Believing in 
conciliation amongst Irishmen, I once brought 



IRELAND AND THE IRISH 145 

Sir Horace to the only spot he had never trod 
in Ireland — the Seminary of Maynooth. Dr. 
Hogan, his severest critic, ran out to welcome 
him, and the entente was established, which 
springs up between all Irishmen of good-will. 
Another time I brought Provost Mahaffy of 
Trinity to see Cardinal Logue. I believe that 
if he had not had to catch a train, they would 
have solved the Irish problem between them! 
The trouble in Ireland is that people are afraid 
of meeting for fear of becoming friends. Dr. 
Mahaffy was the omniscient friend of my 
youth. Though he could teach History, Greek, 
German, and Music at will, I knew him best 
as a snipe-shooter. With his old-fashioned 
gun and soft clerical hat and gaiters he used 
to face the Monaghan bogs — looking not un- 
like Mr. Pickwick in his attire, but a Winkle 
I should add in sporting assiduity. The snipe 
with its long bill is the sacred bird of Irish 
sport — the ibis of the bogs. There are different 
theories as to its shooting as of its cooking. 
Mahaffy held you should fire whenever you 
sighted the white glint of its breast. I once 
saw him kill a snipe between eighty and 
ninety yards away — the most beautiful shot 
I ever saw fired. He was over threescore at 
the time himself. He was wonderful com- 



146 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

pany bog-trotting. He used to launch theories 
on all subjects. He started the idea that is 
now generally held by Irish anglers, that 
coarse fish like the pike came into Ireland 
with the Saxons (whom it resembles for slug- 
gish gluttony) and are still slowly dispos- 
sessing the lively brown trout who is a native 
Irishman of the lakes. Certainly there is no 
old Gaelic word for pike as there is for trout 
and salmon. 

Another theory he broached upon the bogs 
was that the local McKennas, like most glens- 
men and "mountainy" men in Ireland, were 
a remnant of the Firbolgs or original neo- 
lithic race of Ireland, who had been driven by 
the conquering Gaels into the mountain dis- 
tricts. A rounder type of skull and dark hair 
mark the elder race, which is sometimes de- 
scribed as Spanish. It was wrongly said that 
when Oscar Wilde wished to become a Catho- 
lic in his youth at Trinity, Mahaffy advised 
him to become a good pagan instead. Ma- 
haffy 's advice really was: "My dear X3scar, 
you are not quite clever enough to be one of 
us at Trinity, but they will be glad enough to 
have you at Oxford." So Wilde became a Fel- 
low of Magdalen ! Mahaffy has made many 
famous replies, which may one day be chron- 



IRELAND AND THE IRISH 147 

icled. When a fanatic inquired if "he were 
saved," the Doctor of Divinity gravely an- 
swered, yes. "Why do you not proclaim it 
on the housetops ? " went on the other. "Well, 
it was such a narrow squeak, I like to say 
nothing about it!" was the witty answer. 

The last chapter of Irish history has been 
strange. I watched it from many sides. A 
Nationalist candidate myself, two of my re- 
lations were returned as Unionists, a cousin 
entered the Home-Rule cabinet, and an uncle 
became an O'Brienite, or Independent mem- 
ber in Cork, whose beautiful niece as a 
climax married the Ulster leader — Carson him- 
self! 

It always struck me that the Puck who put 
the "Ire" in Ireland must have ranged Red- 
mond and Carson on wrong sides. Redmond 
struck me as a conservative country squire, 
fonder of pressing the trigger of his shooting 
gun than of thumping tubs. A politician who 
has never taken a bribe, forgiving to his polit- 
ical enemies, a tolerant Catholic, and a mild 
rebel, he would have made a better member 
of Grattan's Parliament than a modern leader 
in perilous times. 

Carson was a real boss. He concentrated 
his followers and exuded his own movement. 



148 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

His profession was the law, but his vocation 
was its defiance. He was probably the last 
of the Irish demagogues born to trouble Eng- 
lish politics to frenzy. Only Redmond's in- 
fluence with the cabinet kept him out of jail, 
whither slow-witted Saxons were anxious to 
send him. His cries will linger on the breeze 
of history as long as historians suspect his 
unconscious part in firing the Great War. 

Ireland has always been a stormy petrel. 
Her ancient name was Inisfail — the Island of 
Destiny. Her rebellions have twice preluded 
the fall of English sovereigns. O'Connell's 
agitation gave a lead to the revolutions of 1848 
over Europe. For three years before the Great 
War, Ireland threatened civil convulsion. She 
is the Banshee of the world, and her crying 
aloud betokeneth death ! 

Curiously enough, the wife of an English 
admiral told me that while the English fleet 
were visiting Kiel before the outbreak of war 
she wagered Tirpitz a sovereign that there 
would be civil war that year in Ireland — and 
Tirpitz only smiled! German agents were 
thick in Ireland that year. They made a ter- 
rible mistake of judgment. Even their Eng- 
lish cousins cannot understand Ireland. Irish 
regiments went to the Transvaal cheering 



IRELAND AND THE IRISH 149 

Kruger. They licked the Boers and returned 
cheering — Kruger ! 

Carson's men were in grimmer earnest than 
Redmond's, who could -see humour, which 
was unfortunately closed to the former during 
those fateful months. As a rule in Ireland they 
say everybody can see a joke except the po- 
lice, the Saxon, and the dead. Ulster men are 
a hard-working, hard-saving race, preferring 
to indulge in prejudices rather than pleasures, 
superstitious even in their dread of supersti- 
tion, but peaceable rather than military. A 
feeling of surprised dismay swept over them 
when the War proved to be not their war at 
all, and Ireland was proclaimed in spite of 
their gun-running to be "the one bright spot 
of Empire." Slowly and sadly they performed 
a full turn toward the sea and faced a new 
enemy under their imperturbable leader. Only 
a few were unwilling to think of so good a Prot- 
estant as the Kaiser as an enemy, but the 
most of them remembered too late the for- 
gotten text that they who take the sword 
shall perish by the same. 

We had long known for certain that there 
would be no United Ireland without blood- 
shed. No one expected that it would be 
brought about shoulder to shoulder in another 



150 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

land. Volunteers, Catholic and Protestant, lie 
in French graves. They were apart in their 
lives but in death they are not divided. To 
Ireland herself the Kaiser brought not a sword 
but peace. 



AN EMPIRE OF SPORT AND FREEDOM 

"What should they know of England who only 
England know?" is a phrase of Kipling which 
would have puzzled all Victorian premiers 
except Disraeli. To Disraeli England and the 
East were equally congenial, and he eventually 
merged the English with the Indian crown. 
Kipling's burst to fame came with the rough 
times of the Boer War when prophets were 
needed to say smooth things. In 1888 a friend 
of mine forwarded some of Kipling's work to 
England and received word that it was "not 
up to the standard of the Daily Telegraph!" 

Whoever knows England knows the Em- 
pire. Officially it is not an accretion but an 
extension. English types and codes, English 
sports and chaplains have been reduplicated 
in block, wherever official tape has reddened 
the map. 

The principles of English Whig society 
were no abstract beliefs in fraternity, liberty, 
and equality. That the eldest brother should 
inherit is the English view of fraternity. 
That an Englishman's house is his castle 

151 



152 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

represents his ideal of liberty, and that all 
sportsmen are equal is his nearest approach 
toward equality. Imperialists, on the one 
hand, cannot forgive Ministers who will not 
govern imperially, and "Little Englanders," 
on the other, excuse the Empire in that it is 
not imperial. Nationalism flourishes rather 
than the reverse in British dominions. And 
most religions except that of the state are suc- 
cessful. A spirit of tolerance inclines officials 
to snub the official creed. It is the first Em- 
pire to practise religious tolerance — even unto 
apathy, as earnest believers have reason to 
deplore. Belgium used to send out more 
missionaries annually than England. On the 
Mediterranean English soldiers salute the 
Catholic Host at Malta, and the Holy Carpet 
in Egypt. The Koran is taught in the college 
commemorating Gordon — the principal Chris- 
tian martyr of England. 

Faith and morals of the East have been 
severely left alone since the Indian mutiny. 
Even the horrors of Chinese life in the Trans- 
vaal mines were glossed by Archbishop David- 
son as "a regrettable necessity." Thomas a 
Becket's brimstone is no longer stocked at 
Canterbury. The English official is the worst 
missionary possible. He believes his religious 



SPORT AND FREEDOM 153 

and social customs are the best, but he is in- 
different whether inferior races envy or imi- 
tate. His offer to India is: "We will manage 
your government and finance without bribery 
or injustice. We will spear your pigs and 
shoot your tigers for reward. Worship your 
own gods, and we will sell you their images by 
the gross. If our bishops bore you, they bore 
us much more. If you really wish to be Chris- 
tians, select your own brand." 

The English realise that it is a vain dream 
for those who believe in "original sin" to try 
to convert races who repeat from childhood 
the words: "Man is originally good." I 
once asked a Brahmin how English clergy 
affected him. He answered: "The Bishop 
of Madras used to have a wife, who ruled 
him and his chaplains. We laughed when he 
said he would show us the way to heaven. 
We do not think women can show the way 
to heaven." 

The Indian Empire began with a dividend- 
bearing company and ended in the famous 
phrase, "The white man's burden," which 
represents a hazy notion of an Aryan mission 
to the East. The English have not under- 
stood Indian thought or mysticism. Even 
Sir Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia was a 



154 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

parody of Buddha. Kipling etched Indian 
philosophy in Kim, and Laurence Hope ech- 
oed their passion in The Garden of Karma. 
Incidentally Laurence Hope was the only white 
woman to commit suttee on her husband's 
grave. 

India's real contribution to English life is 
polo, which has since proved a true tie be- 
tween the sea-divided Saxons. It is curious 
that East and West can only meet in games 
— in Persian chess or Indian polo. Sport is 
the key to English rule and character. Fair 
play is the pith and fibre of the Empire. It is 
sport which makes the English generally prefer 
referees to codes, adventure to efficiency, and 
the honour of contest to the lust for reward. 
English justice gives a sporting chance to 
every native in India. The 9th Lancers were 
degraded by Curzon, to his great credit, for 
not confessing the murder of a black cook. 
Uhlans under such circumstance might have 
been promoted. 

The government is not directly responsible 
for famines. For disaffection it is. Govern- 
ment stupidity sends Indians to English uni- 
versities to forget their inferiority at the price 
of that in which they are superior. The symp- 
toms of discontent are sometimes inscrutable. 



SPORT AND FREEDOM 155 

Critics, for instance, point out that statues of 
Queen Victoria in India have to be guarded 
by sentries day and night, like those of Cath- 
erine the Great in Poland. Yet different 
reasons underlie the necessity. Catherine's 
policy of conquest was hateful to Poles. It 
is the public statue of the womanly form that 
shocks Orientals. The presence of Queen 
Mary stripped King George's durbar of the 
reverence, though not of the loyalty, that 
should hedge one who occupies the throne 
of the great Mogul. 

Under English rule no Indian has suffered 
for his religion. The mutiny was due to pig's 
fat on cartridges and pig-headedness in high 
places. It was suppressed by a Viceroy who 
was dubbed "Clemency" for his pains or 
rather for the lack of pains he inflicted on the 
natives. In John Nicholson the mutiny pro- 
duced the only European to receive religious 
worship in the East since Vasco da Gama and 
St. Francis Xavier. 

A traveller was once surprised to see a Judge, 
a Counsel for the Defense, and the Clerk of 
the Court arrive in a distant part of India to 
try a Pariah for his life ! In the same spirit 
the English sent a special train during the 
Boer War to bring a dying Irish private the 



156 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Last Sacraments. Whosoever aspires to the 
next world-empery should make memento of 
such. 

Indians may enter the Council of State 
but not the Bombay Yacht Club. English 
clubs and the Memorial to the Cawnpore 
Massacre are forbidden ground. European 
minorities in the East can afford to grant 
liberty but not equality. Kings can only 
rule where "they can do no wrong," and whites 
must employ similar illusions in guiding the 
black. Modern unrest in India dates from the 
proposal of the Catholic Viceroy Ripon, him- 
self the member of a recently penalised sect, 
to subject white offenders to black magis- 
trates. A typical compromise was made which 
insisted on an Englishman's right to a "pie- 
bald jury" half composed of whites. Under 
Curzon the unrest developed into a kind of 
babu-anarchism. Curzon represented Balliol 
on the throne, the philosopher-king who re- 
formed India, until its calm was broken by 
bombs — a cold, scintillating ruler not un- 
worthy to succeed Warren Hastings, on whose 
virtue or iniquity historians cannot agree. 
He explained the use of commas to his officials 
and introduced the Dalai-Lama to armed 
civilisation. It was no anomaly on his part 



SPORT AND FREEDOM 157 

to give a gorgeous durbar in time of famine. 
Roman Emperors sated the crowds with 
"games and bread," partem et cirsenses. If 
bread was lacking in India, Curzon at least 
provided a circus. 

English and Indian remain inscrutable to 
each other, especially the English. He has 
never wearied inveighing against native caste 
— yet at Curzon's durbar Indian rajahs were 
much entertained by the refusal of visiting 
English duchesses to courtsey to the beau- 
tiful American vice-reine. Pierre Loti wrote a 
poetical book in favour of an India without 
the English, as one might praise a mediaeval 
palace without its modern conveniences. This 
sensible Indians realise; only idealists pro- 
test. 

An appreciation of sportsmanship is the 
test for autonomy through the Empire. Aus- 
tralia had to defeat England at cricket before 
she was given a commonwealth. The entente 
with France was immensely helped in pop- 
ular estimation by France's football victory 
over Scotland. Australia's success caused a 
sentimental mourning for "the Ashes of Eng- 
lish Cricket," and a form of crusade was des- 
patched to bring them back from the antip- 
odes. Losing the Yacht Cup to America was 



158 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

felt almost as much as the original loss of the 
colonies. 

Sport remains the great unofficial depart- 
ment which permeates the Empire and costs 
the nation half as much again as the navy. 
Whoever can define "sport" can define the 
English. Sport is a practice originating prob- 
ably in the ceaseless war Anglo-Saxons had 
to wage against forest animals. The north- 
erners had to be mighty hunters to live. The 
English branch of the Teutonic family carried 
the sea-faring and animal-slaying propensi- 
ties of the race to their highest pitch. Modern 
sport, thanks to a Celtic blend, keeps the 
mean between the torture of animals and 
humanitarianism. Dick Martin, of Gal way, 
established animal protection by law. The 
unwritten law of sport was gradually estab- 
lished that the pursued must be allowed a 
chance to escape. That big game have to be 
killed in the swamp instead of the arena still 
differentiates the northern from the Latin idea 
of sport. The true sportsman prefers to miss 
a difficult quarry rather than to slay an easy 
one. This is a sentiment unknown to the 
Latin and mysterious to the Oriental. A 
Jewish squire was sadly perplexed when his 
guests put down their guns rather than fire 



SPORT AND FREEDOM 159 

among birds that flew too tamely. A sports- 
man is one who takes his chance when he 
ought and not when he can. He shall not aim 
at the sitting bird nor strike the fallen boxer 
nor "quench the smoking flax." True sports- 
manship sweetens the competition of life, is 
long-suffering in action, and is not puffed up 
in reminiscence. 

Yet sport until Victorian days could be 
cruel for cruelty's sake. English bull-fighting, 
in which the animal's horns were sawn, his 
tail and ears cropped, and his nostrils plugged 
with pepper was far more cruel than the 
Spanish ceremony. Bull-baiting was abolished 
in 1835 only. As late as the forties my grand- 
father saw a badger drawn from a tub by a 
woman with her bare shoulders ! 

Sport has gradually attained its refinements 
and position in the Anglo-Saxon world. A 
man without the sporting sense is as much 
out of place as an American without mone- 
tary instincts or a Latin without gallantry. 
"These people must be lunatics or devils," 
observed the Thibetans when the first English 
expedition broke into a gymkhana. Even 
Belgian gendarmes gasped on seeing foot- 
balls bob behind the trenches in Flanders. 
Wellington took foxhounds to the Peninsular 



160 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

War. It is curious how the English mind re- 
duces even militarism to terms of sport. In 
the Boer War ambulance wagons came to be 
called "game-carts." Replacing a general 
was "changing the bowling." Firing on the 
Red Cross was contemptuously summed up 
as "not playing cricket." Sport lends a greater 
prestige to men than politics. In winning the 
Derby during his premiership Lord Rosebery 
experienced a moral grandeur that prevented 
him taking a serious part in politics again. 

The sporting sense lies at the root of the 
national love of compromise. It has pro- 
duced a class of referees. Even the Speaker 
of the House is a glorified umpire who inter- 
prets the rules of parliamentary fair play. It 
is this sense more than language which divides 
German and English. German thoroughness 
can but detest compromises which arise from 
the spirit of freedom and fair play. Germany 
progresses by hard-and-fixed rules — but Eng- 
land by exceptions to rules. German children 
commit suicide to avoid examinations which 
in England are a national joke. The German 
working man is forced to live comfortably. 
In England he is free to be miserable. 

Fair play introduced into war is a stumbling- 
block to German militarists just as cheering 



SPORT AND FREEDOM 161 

an adversary is considered a confession of 
weakness. Yet Botha was cheered at Ed- 
ward's coronation as Marshal Soult was at 
Victoria's. The English went out to war with 
Germany with a genuine wish to see fair play. 
It was a spirit which endured while the Em- 
den was afloat, but sank irretrievably with 
the Lusitania. 

The result of national characteristics has 
given England a sporting rather than a mili- 
tarist caste. In Germany, an officer's uniform 
is his fortune. In England it required a small 
fortune, before the war, to wear one. Only in 
India or Egypt is there a tendency to militar- 
ism. Imperialism, which is the base of all mili- 
tarism, past or present, is of a recent growth 
in England. Its rise may be popularly traced 
in those "deathless" ditties which affect men's 
minds more than laws. From anti-Russian 
days the English crowd hummed: 

"We don't want to fight, 
But by Jingo, if we do !" 

The rank and file of imperialism took their 
name from the verse. The Jubilee period pro- 
duced an infectious chorus not unlike a hys- 
terical peacock's Te Deum, "Tarara-boom- 
de-ay !" 



162 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

The dubious days of the Boer War in which 
the Empire struck bottom temporarily led to 
the haunting refrain: "What ho, she bumps!" 
It was a pity when the day of battle came that 
the music-hall should have taken the place of 
a national Tyrtseus. Perhaps nothing could 
better show the careless phlegm of the Eng- 
lish soldier than the laughing snatches and 
phrases with which he charges. When the 
French chant their Marseillaise, Mr. Atkins 
has been heard to observe as he goes into ac- 
tion for all eternity perhaps: "Front seats 
sixpence ! " 

As long as Gladstone obsessed public life 
by his personality, imperialism was not en- 
couraged as a creed. Chamberlain was the 
first to conceive the notion of putting the Em- 
pire into a fiscal strait-waistcoat. He marked 
the advent of the business man into politics. 
He did not hesitate to conquer the Boers with 
shells made in Germany and cavalry from 
the antipodes. The Boer War should have 
acted as a signal and a warning. General 
after general buried his reputation behind 
the kopjes. Buller was disgraced, Methuen 
captured, and Kitchener reprimanded. The 
despatches made woful reading. Roberts once 
reported that all would have been well 



SPORT AND FREEDOM 163 

with one regiment if there had been no panic ! 
And Buller confided that he had made the 
enemy respect his rear ! It was no consolation 
to hear that the Boer numbers had been killed 
several times over. The public craving for 
comfort centred on Baden-Powell's defence 
of Mafeking. It was afterward confessed that 
the defender had exhibited "unconventional 
gaiety" more than any military quality, and 
even committed lese-majesty by issuing his 
own head on postage-stamps. In the modern 
sense there was not a siege at all. Neverthe- 
less, Mafeking was the high-water mark of 
imperialism. Its relief threw London into 
hysteria and added "maffick" to the Standard 
Dictionary. At Eton I remember a vivid in- 
cident typical of that microcosm of Empire. 
Among the decorations of bunting a Boer 
flag was hung from the window of a boy sus- 
pected of being a pro-Boer. The boys gath- 
ered and stormed the house, the inhabitants of 
which showered their books and stores into 
the street. The air was rent with groceries 
and bathtubs. It was a mad half-hour, and 
the house was more damaged than most of 
the buildings in Mafeking. In the evening the 
whole school marched up to Windsor with 
torches to serenade the old Queen. Leaving 



164 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

the Windsor mob to bellow outside the gates, 
we entered and sang under the royal windows. 
The curtains were drawn aside by the Hindu 
attendants, and we beheld the Queen with 
the cadaverous Bishop of London (Creighton) 
standing in the background. The hand of 
death was over both of them, and, indeed, 
they died within a few days of each other in 
the following January. For a few moments 
the sad, stolid face of Victoria looked out 
upon the children and the grandchildren of the 
Victorians. It was pathetic that she for whom 
Gordon had died and the Light Brigade 
charged should make her farewell bow to us 
from the box on an evening of opera bouffe ! 

The Boer War outlasted Queen Victoria, 
with its endless failures and delays. Warning, 
unfortunately, it did not bring. It even gen- 
erated a fatal idea among Englishmen. It is 
said that the devil, failing to tempt the Irish 
to believe there was no Heaven or Hell, whis- 
pered to them, "There is no hurry" — and they 
believed him. Some genius for evil persuaded 
the English that they could always "muddle 
through." The result was that all ideas of 
efficiency and preparedness resulting from the 
South African travail were still-born. Dis- 
asters were forgotten not digested. The of- 



SPORT AND FREEDOM 165 

ficial history of the Boer War, completed by 
Colonel Robertson, I believe on his death- 
bed, has never been published by the War 
Office. It is a document essential to the his- 
tory of the Empire, but to this day the English 
public are in ignorance. 

The Boer War itself was forgotten in the 
elections of 1906. The Liberals returned to 
power on the tide of reaction, bringing with 
them all the half-hatched feuds and schemes 
which made the country a political cockpit 
until the outbreak of the Great War eight 
years later. 

The English were more encouraged than 
dismayed by their adventures on that con- 
tinent, which had swallowed empires and 
churches. The travels of Livingstone, his dis- 
covery by Stanley with the immortal "Dr. Liv- 
ingstone, I presume," uttered at their meet- 
ing, the finding of Victoria Nyanza, Rhodesia, 
the Cape to Cairo Railway, the purchase of 
the Suez Canal, and the damming of the Nile 
led the English to believe in their vocation 
as a charmed if not a chosen people in Africa. 
They absorbed the Boers, they shooed the 
French from Fashoda, and they blocked the 
Germans in Morocco. 

The Egyptian chapter was amazing. The 



166 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

early Victorians used to be interested in the 
Sphinx because of its resemblance to Tom 
Cribb's countenance after a prize-fight. The 
next generation conceived a mission to the 
Egyptians. They entered into a dual control 
with the French to rule that part of the Sul- 
tan's dominions for the good of its inhabi- 
tants. The bombarding of Alexandria and 
single control followed. The patriot Arabi 
was defeated, and only escaped death owing to 
four thousand pounds' worth of legal assistance 
from Wilfred Blunt. Arabi was spared, but 
Gordon was sacrificed. Whether Gladstone's 
soul must sit and twitter for ever on the tele- 
graph-wires to Khartoum or not, Gordon's 
soul marches in the great army of idealists, 
whom the world has not known how to use. 
Only England could have given Egypt a Gor- 
don and a Cromer. Since Joseph, no for- 
eigner has done more for Egypt materially 
than Cromer. As an instance of the eternal 
gulf between idealists and practical men 
Cromer's record of Gordon is curious. He 
recognised his "lively though sometimes ill- 
directed repugnance to injustice, oppression, 
and meanness of every description and con- 
siderable power of acquiring influence on 
those, necessarily limited in numbers, with 
whom he was brought into personal contact." 



SPORT AND FREEDOM 167 

But — "as a matter of personal morality" he 
did not think "his process of reasoning de- 
fensible." Words that might have appeared 
in Pilate's Judean memoirs of Another Great 
Idealist. Pilate was the prototype of all Eng- 
lish officials — with his condescending yet con- 
temptuous manner to natives, his tolerant 
scorn of their beliefs, and his occasional fee- 
ble generosity toward patriots or prophets. 
Pilate had good points and was canonised by 
the Abyssinian Church. Cromer, like any 
English official, could not have understood 
why Gordon should prefer a lonely death to 
"hailing the tram of the world" (Gordon's 
phrase), or why an Egyptian Moslem should 
prefer death for his prophet to prosperity un- 
der Christian rule. 

To compare Egypt in the eighties with 
Palestine under the Romans would afford a 
parallel. The British and Roman Empires 
have been more alike than any other. If the 
old khedive out-Heroded Herod, and Cromer 
displayed the governing qualities of a Pilate, 
the Mahdi and Gordon between them supplied 
some historical inkling to the position and 
political effect of Christ — plunged as He found 
Himself in another perilous meeting-ground 
between East and West. 

Monsignor Sibarra, the Pope's representa- 



168 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

tive in the Soudan, held Gordon to be a saint 
and kept his cigar-case as a relic. He had 
seen Gordon pray in ecstasy like a mediaeval 
contemplative, and he was an official judge of 
such matters. He wished to go with him to 
Khartoum but Gordon bade him wait and 
pray. 

If the British Empire has shown religious 
tolerance, she has lacked the higher gift of 
imagination. Her motto, " Imperium et Liber- 
tas" is really a contradiction in terms. A 
sporting pity for inferiors like the fellaheen, 
together with a decided respect for fighting 
equals like the Boers, has made modern im- 
perialism the glittering excuse for a wider 
liberty than is consistent with armed rule over 
conquered races. 

Not that it has repressed a native and na- 
tionalist view. It is from England herself 
that the strongest criticisms of the invasions 
of Egypt, Afghanistan, the Boer Republics, 
and Thibet have come. Defenceless invasions 
of the defenceless they appeared to many 
honest Englishmen who said so. 

Whoever writes the lining of English his- 
tory must consult the little-known mono- 
graphs of Wilfred Blunt criticising English 
rule in Ireland, Egypt, and India. His par- 



SPORT AND FREEDOM 169 

tisanship may be as sharp as salt, but his 
view makes a necessary condiment to an im- 
partial history. 

Yet Wilfred Blunt is one of the most Eng- 
lish of Englishmen I know, with his stubborn 
individualism and his chivalrous sense of 
fair play. A poet himself and a breeder of 
Arabian horses, a Catholic with Mohammedan 
sympathies, a Sussex landlord, and an Ori- 
ental politician — he is not far removed from 
the Byronic tradition which has made English 
gentlemen the symbol of madness and gen- 
erosity abroad. 

Wilfred Blunt did not hesitate to adopt 
the cause of Ireland, and was thrown into 
Galway Gaol by his own cousin Mr. Balfour, 
then Irish Secretary. It is difficult to be 
serious in Ireland without becoming ridiculous, 
for some unexplained but historical reason. 
Blunt used to distribute his photograph in 
convict kit to his friends. King Edward see- 
ing one of these, was puzzled by the uniform. 
"It is your Majesty's," he was informed. 

Perhaps Wilfred Blunt is a better symbol 
of English character than the procurators and 
viceroys whom his books assail. I have never 
seen him obstruct the motors of financiers 
with his beautiful horses in Sussex lanes with- 



170 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

out realising the English love of individual 
freedom, and distaste of the machine. In spite 
of herself has England become imperialistic. 
Her better self has condemned and striven to 
rectify her treatment of the Irish and the 
Boers. It is possible that such races of man- 
kind as have settled down under British rule 
during the nineteenth century have enjoyed 
the same admixture of peace and toleration 
with which the Flavian and Antonine em- 
perors made happy the world — at least as 
happy as historical conditions ever seem likely 
to permit. 



SOCIETY IN DECAY 

Within memory of many people living, Eng- 
lish society was a feudal club without right of 
entry from outside. The Whigs of pedigree 
stood at the head of a great patrician stud. 
Though eugenics as a science were unknown, 
the social value of good breeding was even 
overappreciated. Blood, whatever its merits, 
led to position and success. The advantages 
and the defects of aristocratic inbreeding are 
always noticeable. Peerage, baronetage, and 
gentry formed limited circles. Betwixt the 
squirarchy and the plebs there was a gulf 
fixed. The remnants of the old Catholic 
peerage were the most exclusive of all. Their 
blood was changed during Victoria's reign by 
the Oxford converts in the same way that the 
American brides later freshened the veins of 
the peerage as a whole. 

For good or for bad the old society decayed, 
and was succeeded by another whose decay 
may also be questioned. A caste of some 
five hundred privileged trustees has extended 
into a mob of ten thousand, few of whom are 
native gentry, and the most prominent seldom 

171 



172 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Europeans. On the one hand, American women 
charmed their way into the charmed circle, 
while, on the other, Jews and mercantile princes 
entered by all manner of hooks and crooks. 
The Jew has a better position in England than 
America, where he is socially boycotted by a 
society which is as rich or richer. English 
society is poorer both in possessions and pride. 
From being so unknown in society that Dis- 
raeli was only admitted as a drawing-room 
freak, the Jew has come to permeate London 
society. He entered under the gonfalon of 
the Rothschilds. Bringing the first news of 
Waterloo made the Rothschilds great among 
a nation of stock-brokers. During the nine- 
teenth century the Jews have taken a part in 
every department of life. No profession and 
no party can claim them. Their Joshuas and 
Calebs have carried away no ignoble fruits 
from the land. Within half a century a 
Disraeli became Premier, a Hershel Lord 
Chancellor, a Jessel Master of the Rolls, a 
Montefiore Lord Mayor, an Isaacs Chief Jus- 
tice, a Solomon Royal Academician, and a 
Nathan Colonial Governor. Jewish names 
were even found at times among the state 
bishops. The English archbishoprics remain, 
however, a Scotch monopoly. 



SOCIETY IN DECAY 173 

Individual Jews have by their services been 
of national benefit. But the society-seeking 
swarm has had doubtful results. Their in- 
discriminate entry has changed such standards 
as made social privileges worth while. It was 
a curious fact that Edward VII as Prince and 
King was the most responsible for pressing 
them into the front seats. 

Anti-Semitic feeling is as degrading and out 
of date as the pillory, but social discrimina- 
tion can be an ethical necessity. It is dif- 
ficult to press the social charge home — for, on 
the one hand, the Jews show a higher religious 
and moral life than English society. But 
nationally they are out of place, as is shown 
by their total lack of the sporting sense, ex- 
cept in the occasional guise of magnificent 
patrons. The silly Gentile has not understood 
so well in England as in America that the cho- 
sen people are wiser than the children of the 
world, and that the meek do inherit the earth. 
Nevertheless, Jewish versatility demands ad- 
miration in modern England. They win vic- 
tories on the turf and conduct debate in the 
House of Commons as successfully as they 
run newspapers and banks. Parliament is 
their wash-pot, and over the Empire they have 
cast their shoe. 



174 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

The only professions in which they have not 
risen are those of arms and diplomacy. They 
have not entered the Army, owing not so much 
to lack of courage as to the smallness of the 
remuneration, which might well challenge the 
divine injunction to soldiers to be satisfied 
with their pay. Sir William Butler used to 
say that Gordon was the only soldier he knew 
who was. 

From English diplomacy Jews are excluded 
because cleverness is not its first qualification. 
Nor have Jews taken to the Navy. The Phoe- 
nicians performed sea-service for them in old 
days and the ships of England secure the 
carriage of their commerce to-day. 

The decay or soundness of society influences 
every profession except the Navy. There may 
be "political" generals, but the admiral in 
politics is rare. It required so bluff and breezy 
a type as Lord Charles Beresford to carry off 
the role. Isaac Butt, Parnell's predecessor, 
once suggested that Beresford should lead the 
Irish party. He has, however, represented the 
Navy in the House. Nobody can be too 
thankful for his text that "Battleships are 
cheaper than battles." His criticism has been 
sound when naval and not political, but as 
an Irish admiral in English politics, he has 



SOCIETY IN DECAY 175 

sometimes found himself sitting between some- 
what unmusical chairs. 

The distinction of the English Navy as well 
as its safeguard is in being outside society. 
The Navy is always absent on its mission 
upon the sea. Naval officers are devoted to 
their service like Levites from their youth 
up. Yeoman and seafaring blood predom- 
inates among them. No alien may serve in 
the ships. The Army included men of sport 
and society, as well as the professional strate- 
gist. But the naval officer finds his profession 
paramount and absorbing. It is for him to 
leave parents and family and to serve unre- 
mittingly upon the altars of the deep. Hard 
toil and scant pay through long years are his, 
that others may be safe in gathering the 
riches of the world. 

The Navy is the force which never ceases 
to be in action. Their warfare against other 
navies has proven a direct continuation of 
their previous life. To mobilise they do not 
have to leave their homes. The sailors have 
always been in the trenches, and their trenches 
are the seven seas. Their traditions have 
been untouched by the lowering of ideals 
which has invaded every other class and pro- 
fession. The saviour of society owes its 



176 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

strength to the fact that it remains apart and 
uncontaminated by society itself. 

Parenthetically, it may be noticed that the 
navy as a service retains much of the old 
religious sense. Admiral Beresford notes truly 
that the men swear but do not blaspheme. 
In Germany the navy is the secondary service, 
and the calibre of the middle-class atheists 
who pace her decks cannot compare with the 
Christian gentlemen under the white ensign. 
The English fleet has been aptly compared 
to the Roman legions cut off from a decadent 
capital, to guard the world from the barbarians. 
Whether English society was suffering from 
decay or development, symptoms made their 
appearance not far different from those which 
historians tell of the last phase of Roman 
history. The Colosseum once contained the 
same crowds of pallid unfit that watched 
the muddy arenas of English football. A 
similar indolent and half -educated bourgeoisie 
loafed in the imperial baths as attended Eng- 
lish cricket. In the higher stage of society 
there was the same revulsion from the old- 
fashioned virtues and an expressed contempt 
for whatever belonged to the Augustan, or in 
the latter case Victorian, age in writing or 
morals. London churches were deserted for 



SOCIETY IN DECAY 177 

week-end parties exactly as the temples were 
scorned by the jaded pleasure-seekers of Rome. 
Nobody in England took the sovereign's De- 
fensorship of the faith more seriously than the 
Romans took the deification of their emperors. 
The state religion in London had a less hold 
on many than the charlatan, the theosophist, 
and the necromancer, just as Capitoline Jove 
and the matronly Juno were deserted for the 
more exciting deities of the East. Society 
women in London exchanged family lockets 
for immodest charms. Porte-bonheurs and 
talismans of jade found more sale than crosses 
or "Rizpah" brooches. The frequent conver- 
sions and cross-conversions denoted an era of 
dissolving rather than growing faith. I heard 
of a parson who became a priest and then a 
parson again, by which time he believed in 
nothing. He was chaplain to a Protestant 
workhouse. He told us that, remembering 
that in the presence of death Canon Law gave 
him back his privileges, he used to confess and 
baptise dying paupers and pack them off 
heavenward as good Catholics before they 
knew where they were ! The dramatic situa- 
tion was not unlike that described in Balzac's 
Atheist's Mass. Neurotic criminology attracted 
more interest than unselfish charity. The 



178 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

signs were present, even if the decay was not 
as deep as German sociologists wished to be- 
lieve. War instantly restored the old stoical 
and patriotic virtues. 

It is very difficult to gauge any society at 
any given time. But its soundness or decay 
may be tested by its view of morality j its 
practice of humour, and its attitude toward 
woman (who incidentally is the mixture of 
morality and humour). The Anglo-Saxon 
treatment of women is considered highly 
chivalrous by Anglo-Saxons, but supremely 
ridiculous by Latins. In Latin countries 
women have little legal right, but they enjoy 
(from their point of view) the best husbands — 
at least husbands who are less family men 
than romantic lovers. The position of women 
in England is based partly on legal rights and 
partly on the unwritten law. The dual posi- 
tion has produced confusion, irritation, and 
suffragism. 

In America (the country where the Anglo- 
Saxon loses his sense of compromise) the 
woman is a man's legal, in some places his 
electoral, equal. As a result Americans may 
be more moral husbands than Latins, but 
they are disappointing to the wives whom they 
treat as beautiful housekeepers to await their 



SOCIETY IN DECAY 179 

evening return from business with diamond 
tiaras for lace caps. This is, perhaps, the 
psychological reason why American women 
marry foreigners, though the native man is a 
cleaner and more generous type. A Latin 
considers that to leave a wife alone all day 
is equivalent to desertion. There is a differ- 
ence again between the Latin cavalier and the 
Anglo-Saxon gentleman. The latter treats 
all women as virtuous until they plainly de- 
clare the contrary. The former looks upon 
every woman as a possible source of romance 
until she closes his hopes. The sexual polite- 
ness of Latins is most apparent in the drawing- 
room. A sinking liner is the proper back- 
ground for the more stolid chivalry of the 
Anglo-Saxon. Latins often taunt Englishmen 
that they show the same pride and fondness to- 
ward their wives as for their horses. "Fine" 
is a word they apply exactly to both. 

In its clumsy and illogical way English 
morality has held together. It is often loose 
but seldom decadent. The British matron is 
righteous, and the general run of Englishmen 
are bored if not contemptuous at the vices 
of abroad. An easy-going virtue cements 
more English marriages than the subtler emo- 
tions could. Even American wives brought 



180 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

less romance than emancipation into Eng- 
land. 

American women have played a brilliant 
and eugenic part in modern society. They 
have restored many of the old English virtues 
which seemed at one time likely to survive 
only with the middle class. They have made 
some counterpart against the more foreign 
admixture which has entered London. The 
Americans taught tact and learned reverence of 
Englishwomen. The quickest instance of tact 
I ever saw in an American hostess was in a 
church. She was entertaining a member of the 
royal family in a back-country district. The 
plate was handed round at collection and roy- 
alty carelessly dropped silver. Quick as light- 
ning the hostess covered it with gold. Each 
vestryman was asked by his wife what the 
visitor had given and royal munificence has 
been a byword in those parts ever since ! 

English morality is inscrutable and illogical. 
Magna Charta apparently allows a man to 
parade the worst woman in London at a 
watering-place, but the local by-laws forbid 
a boy bathing with his mother. Society is 
weird in its acceptances and exclusions. The 
most bankrupt and disreputable peer passes 
as a decayed gentleman, but a nobleman who 



SOCIETY IN DECAY 181 

has cheated at cards enters the class that 
Orientals call "the untouchables." The most 
famous of society card cheaters was none the 
less tabooed, though it appeared he had cheated 
in order to support an aged mother! An act 
which seems as pardonable as that of the fash- 
ionable lady who forged her husband's check 
to subscribe to a cathedral. The unpleasant 
obverse of all British morality is the national 
hypocrisy, the "ostrich" policy of burying 
the head rather than face moral problems. 
The ostrich feathers in the Prince of Wales's 
crest are a national symbol. The English 
nation will not allow a spade to be called a 
spade, or else they will insist on a charitable 
supposition that it is a shovel. In England 
a man may live with whom he will, provided 
only England never knows. Parnell was no 
degenerate, but he married his mistress (which 
is more than most Englishmen would have 
grace to do). Sir George Lewis, his lawyer, 
urged him to contest the divorce suit against 
O'Shea, as he believed it could not be pressed 
after cross-examination. Parnell's only an- 
swer, as I learned from Lady Lewis, was: 
"My first duty is to the lady." It may be 
said that he sacrificed his public to his pri- 
vate honour. 



182 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Sir George Lewis had, perhaps, the best 
knowledge of English society that was pos- 
sible to a clever and experienced lawyer. 
He kept a central clearing-house for family 
scandals and skeletons, and could cancel one 
against the other with calculated precision. 
It is difficult not to believe that necessity 
will arise for his professional services on the 
Day of Judgment. One of his acts was of 
rare generosity. He was opposed to Dilke on 
the occasion of his divorce trial, but offered 
him as good advice as he later offered Parnell. 
Perceiving there was no damning question 
they could really ask him, he advised him pri- 
vately to enter the witness-box rather than 
allow a great career to be ruined. Unfortu- 
nately Dilke took other advice. 

The two most promising careers in English 
and Irish politics were sacrificed at their 
zenith, owing to the moral sense of English 
dissenters, and with political results extending 
far further than the two principals. 

It is curious, though idle, to try to inquire 
what the effect of these causes celebres had 
upon history. If Parnell had remained chair- 
man of the Irish party, Home Rule would have 
probably been passed in 1894, and England 
would not have been threatened by an Irish 



SOCIETY IN DECAY 183 

civil war twenty years later, when she needed 
all her wits to face the menace of Germany. 

If Dilke had succeeded Gladstone as his 
party had hoped, and occupied Asquith's 
shoes until his death in 1909, it is possible 
that Germany might have had reasons to re- 
consider her decision in 1914. Though Dilke 
was a red Radical and a personal friend of 
Gambetta, he wrote text-books on The Brit- 
ish Army and Greater Britain, both of them 
subjects removed from the Liberal mind. He 
might have made England readier for war. 
Gambetta had no doubt influenced him with 
the experiences of France. 

Forms of humour are a subtle medium for 
testing a human society. To tell a nation's 
jokes is to tell its moral code. Humour is 
the element which is most quickly irradiated 
or corroded by the surrounding age. The 
humour of the later Roman Empire or the 
second French Empire was a sign-post of 
decadence. English humour still spells rowdi- 
ness rather than riot. The practical joke was 
always a Teutonic institution. The Latin 
jests with his curling lips, the Anglo-Saxon 
by clumsy horse-play. 

It is true that the finer wit of the eighteenth 
century has disappeared from London with the 



184 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

old-fashioned wines. Gossip and sparkling 
cheapness have taken its place. Mrs. Robert 
Crawshay remains the only wit whose bons 
mots would have been considered classical in 
the days of Curran and Sheridan. Her famous 
description of the last and talkative Lord 
Erne and his well-chiselled lady was taken 
from one line in Gray's Elegy: 

" Storied Urn and animated bust." 

When Chamberlain introduced tariff reform, 
she asked Mr. Balfour if "England expects 
every man to pay her duty?" 

The last parliamentary mot in the old style 
was made by Lord Hugh Cecil. He was told 
to expect a challenge to duel after his attack 
on Brodrick's management of the War Office. 

"I should win/' he answered with equa- 
nimity. "Brodrick is sure to use an obsolete 
weapon!" 

The first hint of the coming of the war 
spread in some circles by a jest. Somebody 
inquired if the diplomatists in London looked 
so dogged as rumours said. Worse, was the 
reply, the Russian ambassador has got his 
Dogger look! It will be remembered that he 
staved off war on the Dogger Bank incident 
after a terrible strain. 



SOCIETY IN DECAY 185 

Unfortunately the lowest and most ungen- 
erous forms of abuse now prevail in a House, 
where 'tis folly to be either witty or wise. 
The expressions and monosyllables which the 
national representatives bandy may be collated 
to any extent among the wits of Whitechapel 
and Limehouse. 

As a matter of fact, there never was any 
native English wit. It was largely imported 
by Irishmen. The practical joke was the 
English form of humour — concrete and clumsy 
if not coarse. English memoirs record many 
of these heavy pleasantries in the place where 
French writers embalm examples of the na- 
tional gift for the glittering phrase. 

Theodore Hook (Disraeli's Stanislaus Hoax) 
was the epitome of English humour. His 
ventures in bon mot were childishly ridiculous, 
but his Berner's Street hoax held up the traffic 
of London. 

It is difficult not to mention a remarkable 
practical joker who added so much to the 
humour of the forgotten days of King Ed- 
ward VII. J. J. Cole was a contemporary of 
mine at Cambridge. I was fortunate enough 
to witness the famous visit he paid in 1905 
to the University, of which he was a student, 
disguised as the Sultan of Zanzibar. Accom- 



186 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

panied by a suite selected among his friends, 
he was driven in the mayor's carriage to view 
the familiar sights. His next feat was to 
emulate Koepenick and inspect a British 
battleship disguised as a foreign prince, and 
to distribute decorations to the simple-minded 
sailors — (who, however, caught and caned 
him long afterward). He was last heard of as 
the guest of the Irish viceroy in Dublin, where 
I believe he tested the local detective force 
by simulating an attack on the viceroy, and 
waiting, watch in hand, for the members of 
the secret service to arrive, too late to be of 
any assistance ! 

On the whole, English humour and English 
morality have broadened but not decayed. 
Rottenness and deterioration have fastened 
upon sections of English society, but wholesale 
decadence is not there. The war has purged 
away much dross and allowed some of the 
original metal to come to the surface. But 
new metals and new moulds will be needed in 
the period after the war. 



POST-VICTORIANISM 

Edward VII led his subjects in their natural 
desire to set aside Victorian things. For 
years he had chafed under the strict surveil- 
lance imposed by the Prince Consort. A re- 
action was the result, and as Prince of Wales 
he found his friends elsewhere than at court, 
and his interests in other capitals than his 
mother's. The humiliating and dependent 
position in which the Queen retained him 
made him the first Englishman to break with 
Victorianism. He shocked Victoria's subjects, 
as he afterward delighted his own. In his 
reign everybody was anxious to be different 
from their Victorian grandparents. The Vic- 
torian attitude had upheld all conventions, 
literary, political, or religious. Enthusiasm 
for the new or scepticism of the old had been 
regarded as too American or too French. 
The Oxford movement which might have 
developed a national religion was embittered 
to take refuge in the arms of Rome. The 
aesthetic movement which might have led 
to a national art was ridiculed into preciosity 

187 



188 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

and early decadence. The Victorians laughed 
at their prophets. 

But in the reigns of Edward and George 
new movements were taken up with such 
speed and enthusiasm that they were liable 
to dissipate into thin absurdity of themselves. 
Everybody set out to break rules and sup- 
plant conventions. The latest "craze" or 
"rage" superseded the old staple diet. There 
was an unholy cry for strange meats. The at- 
mosphere was agitated by crank artists and 
preposterous poseurs, and became hectic and 
unbalanced. Patriotism came to be regarded 
as old-fashioned and morality as stupid. To 
be serious was a social defect. Even society's 
sinners were not serious enough to be really 
bad. People were willing to forego their sin- 
ning, provided they were not mistaken for 
good. Young men who in a sterner age would 
have enjoyed being taken for arctic explorers 
preferred being suspected of decadence. Quite 
bourgeois people, without the ability or oc- 
casions to be fast, simulated moral speed. 
Doubtless there were psychological thrills, 
and the old Victorian blood cried to Heaven 
and Hell for thrills. Society indulged in what 
theologians call the sins of association. 

In literature Browning and Tennyson were 



POST-VICTORIANISM 189 

dismissed as grandmotherly. The latter was 
sent to Coventry and the former to Boston. 
Swinburne was hailed as the only poet of his 
era, about twenty years after he had ceased 
to write good poetry. It was discovered that 
the "yellow" nineties had been the only 
artistic decade of the previous century. A 
feverish rechauffe of Wilde, Beardsley, and 
Pater followed. A post- Victorian literature 
was not long in starting on its own account 
with flashiness for its hall-mark and paradox 
as the test of its sterling. Literary values be- 
came entirely superficial. The glitter without 
the weight of gold was accepted and honoured. 
English literature passed from an Augustan 
age straight to that of brass. There was no 
intermediary age of silver. 

Commencement-de-siecle writers arose as bril- 
liant and soundful as brass, who insisted 
on writing against time, though they had a 
fresh century ahead of them. They seemed 
to share a consciousness with Edward Rex 
that their day was short — as though some 
early cataclysm threatened to make an end 
of them and of all their works. As a result, 
there was little scientific or philosophic writ- 
ing. The three-volumed novel was succeeded 
by the six-penny one. Writers learned to 



190 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

heighten and intensify the produce of the 
moment. The ablest and most distinct of 
Edwardian writers was Chesterton. He wrote 
like some Dr. Johnson condemned to set forth 
the coils of his expression by cable code. As 
a result, he substituted the paradox for the 
period. In a literary tour de force he defended 
orthodoxy by writing a book about Heretics, 
and he exactly hit his age in laying down 
"the golden rule that there is no golden rule." 
Very exactly also he probed the thought of 
all contemporary writing in the choice saying: 
"Everything matters except everything." He 
perfected the game of literary "reversi" in 
which pieces that were red one moment are 
seen to be green the next. An irritating but 
scintillant style. Smilingly he stood Truth 
upon her head to explain the Universal An- 
tipodes in which we all have our being. 

Chesterton had serious motives behind his 
paradoxes, but others were sensational for 
sensation's sake. Bernard Shaw may have 
had an artistic and a dramatic message to 
deliver, but he could not forego the cheapest 
advertisement of the prophet. It was not 
until after the death of Victoria that Shaw 
could be appreciated or tolerated. Though 
in France he would only have been considered 



POST-VICTORIANISM 191 

an outmoded Voltairian, he passed in Eng- 
land for the apogee of human daring and 
originality. The vogue endured until the 
futurists swept into undisputed mastery of 
the powers of topsyturvydom. Nevertheless, 
both Shaw and Chesterton had sane lessons 
to teach the Victorian. The futurist only 
wished to destroy him and as a preliminary 
to drive him mad. 

The influences which corroded literature 
worked with tenfold corruption through the 
press. The Daily Mail, ochre offspring of 
the yellow nineties, reached its zenith in Ed- 
wardian days, when its proprietor became 
proprietor of the Times. Harmsworth showed 
himself a transatlantic Hearst, but he secured 
prestige and immunity by supporting the 
side of reaction in politics. Hailed as a paper 
Napoleon, he chose the title of Northcliffe, 
enabling him to copy the Napoleonic initial 
in his signature. Under his aegis rose a school 
of journalists, each of whom carried an editor's 
pen in his knapsack. Journalism and litera- 
ture became as indistinguishable as republi- 
canism and Empery under Napoleon. 

The infection of sensationalism spread to 
the pulpit. The Bishop of London used 
flashy novels, like When It Was Dark, as the 



192 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

subject of sermons in St. Paul's Cathedral. 
Dissenting preachers developed a church slang 
and even called on their hearers to stand by 
the old firm, "God and Son" J Only the shop- 
keeping soul could ever have conceived the 
Trinity under such a figure. The Catholic 
pulpit was liable to the same necessity. Only 
by sensation apparently could credence be 
attracted. Father Vaughan, decrying the Sins 
of Society to audiences, which were neither 
sinners nor society, was in symbolic relations 
with his times. 

The novelists followed on the same track. 
A bright mildew pervaded their pages. Their 
Victorian fathers had eaten sour grapes in 
the garden of Mrs. Grundy and the children's 
teeth were set on edge. There was a cry for 
something wilder than Scott, for something 
more gloomy than the Brontes, for something 
more sexual than George Eliot. Dickens and 
Miss Austen were as forgotten as the Penta- 
teuch. Even novelists who had begun writ- 
ing in the Victorian age developed new and 
unexpected methods. Wells poured the labora- 
tory, and George Moore the lavatory, into 
their books. Wells became the chemical and 
mechanised romanticist of his time. An inter- 
est in science served him and his readers in 



POST-VICTORIANISM 193 

place of a love of chivalry. There arose a cry 
for the future instead of the past. 

George Moore was a French writer of the 
naturalist school writing in English. His 
novels were as great a tour de force as though 
a Greek erotic writer endeavoured to express 
himself in clumsy Latin. Of their school, 
Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa are not likely 
to be replaced in English. It was typical of 
the Victorian and post- Victorian ages that up 
to 1900 everybody pretended they had not 
read George Moore, while under King Edward 
they pretended they had. After interesting 
himself in the Gaelic movement Moore pro- 
duced a trilogy of novels which had the ironic 
result of immortalising the revivalists of Irish 
letters in the English literature they once 
had hopes of supplanting. He sketched the 
portraits of his familiar friends with an un- 
abashed pen. A. E., Douglas Hyde, Lady 
Gregory, Edward Martyn, and Yeats live with 
all their idiosyncrasies in his pages. Since 
Boswell jotted Johnson there has been no such 
photography. 

Even the Catholic novelist Hugh Benson 
could not help exhibiting the contemporary 
symptoms. He wrote fascinating novels in the 
nature of propaganda. He burned flash-lights 



194 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

before the altars of Rome. He once confided 
to me that his novel The Conventionalists was 
written to madden the critics. He had just 
converted a clever contemporary of mine at 
Cambridge by a process of exciting mysticism. 
That process he elaborated in his next novel, 
The Conventionalists. Not content with sketch- 
ing his penitent, he leaped into his own pages 
under his own name and triumphantly con- 
verted his hero over again ! He mingled mys- 
ticism and wove the tags of theology into his 
novels exactly as Wells transferred the sweep- 
ings of science to his. 

The post- Victorian concert was a mad one 
while it lasted. In the midst Bernard Shaw 
sang solos in minor blasphemy, while Chester- 
ton wrung fantastic fugues from a Gothic 
organ. The notes sounded by others were 
too superficial to need criticism, but their in- 
spiration was typified by the sensation-seeker 
who noted in the account he wrote of himself 
in a Who's Who — "married — (for money). " 
If readers remained sane it was because they no 
more took literature seriously than the writers 
thereof. Eventually, perhaps, they came to 
share Chesterton's "insane dread of insanity." 
They needed rest more than change, and it 
must be confessed that it was out of sheer 



POST-VICTORIANISM 195 

vertigo that Kipling, Chesterton, and Belloc 
began to hymn such English simplicities as 
Sussex, Beer, and Chalk. 

Outside the circle of a literature which, 
however disfigured by cleverness, was seldom 
offensive, a thoroughly unpleasant output of 
memoirs marked the taste of the age. Egre- 
gious personalities masqueraded as reminis- 
cences. Heading the charge of "light" litera- 
ture, Lady Cardigan achieved the Balaclava 
of scurrility. The type of author known as 
the literary ghost (or ghoul) appeared and 
compiled the recollections of the Crown Prin- 
cess of Saxony and Countess Larisch. The 
sale for such works multiplied. During the 
last few weeks before the war the public were 
admitted to Lord Alfred Douglas's confidences 
on Oscar Wilde and to Mrs. Parnell's inti- 
macies with the dead Irish leader. It was, per- 
haps, time that Thor came knocking upon the 
gates. 

The same portents were visible in politics 
as in literature. Chivalry, restraint, and de- 
corum, whatever their demerits, took a back 
place. The House of Commons took its tone 
from the new Labour party. Acrimonious and 
senseless revilings took the place of argument 
on both sides. The younger men who at- 



196 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

tained prominence were advanced for their 
glib smartness. Mr. F. E. Smith rose to the 
forefront of the Tory party after a single 
speech of overcharged epigram. It was re- 
marked that in earlier days he would only 
have qualified to be Disraeli's secretary. An- 
other career which would have been impossible 
in Victorian days was that of Horatio Bot- 
tomley. He may be summarised as a modern 
Socrates, "the gadfly of the state," but a 
Socrates who has taken to journalism. His 
criticisms were not scurrilous or delivered 
below the belt, but his sheet John Bull be- 
came endeared to the public for sensation's 
sake. There is a sensationalism of morality 
as well as of vice. 

The last few months of politics and political 
gossip before the war broke out were sad and 
ignominious to recall. Stagnation, suspicion, 
and slander combined to poison the atmos- 
phere. Never were dissensions in English 
life so acrimonious or tongues so malicious. 
Mr. Asquith's salary would not have paid 
the duty on all the wine Tory hostesses in- 
sisted he was drinking. Chief Justice Isaacs 
was accused of financial sharping, and Winston 
Churchill of organising a cold-blooded pogrom 
in Ulster. The extremes of bitterness and 



POST-VICTORIANISM 197 

fabrication were reached in reference to naval 
questions. Lords of Admiralty were arraigned 
as traitors or Cingalees ! The latter incred- 
ible assertion was hurled by opponents at 
Lord Fisher, who certainly began life as he 
is ending it — a very stolid and pugnacious 
Englishman. 

Of the protagonists in the naval debates 
Admiral Beresford was my father's cousin, 
and Winston Churchill was my own, and I 
must admit that the blows and counterblows 
which they exchanged were manly and above 
the belt. Amid a crowd of sneaking partisans 
they fought disinterestedly for what each 
believed to be the best for the Navy. When 
the war broke out I was gratified to hear 
Beresford say that England could never be 
sufficiently grateful for what Winston had 
done in mobilising the fleet, while Winston ad- 
mitted in a characteristic burst of generosity 
that the Admiralty had profited from Beres- 
ford's previous criticism. 

With the single exception of the Admiralty, 
the English social machine politically, edu- 
cationally, and even morally was unprepared 
and reluctant for war. The Empire as a whole 
had sat down to rest upon her laurels. Her 
expansion was at an end. She tipped from 



198 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

Lhasa to Alaska — from Cairo to Cape — from 
Victoria Nyanza to King Edward VII's land. 
"Thinking imperially" showed signs of ex- 
haustion. Energy and discussion were con- 
centrated on domestic affairs, Home Rule, 
Disestablishment, the House of Lords. The 
maelstrom of politics became more and more 
agitated. England staggered in the transition 
stage between the old-fashioned and limited 
rule of her political aristocrats to the un- 
limited supremacy of social democrats. The 
cabinet showed transitional symptoms. It 
contained a farrago of Whigs, Liberals, and 
Socialists endeavouring to be progressive in 
harmony. Within five years Lloyd George 
changed English life — whether for good or for 
bad historians will have to probe far-reaching 
results to decide. As far as national balance 
and efficiency were concerned, Lloyd George 
came either too soon or too late. The war 
found the scales between the classes and 
masses not only unadjusted but in dangerous 
agitation. The atmosphere was rent with 
their violent dissensions and the streets were 
filled with trampled suffragettes. Ireland was 
tossed in the brew of civil war and Wales 
became a sectarian cockpit. In England the 
menace of trade-unions overshadowed even 



POST-VICTORIANISM 199 

the question of lords and education — both 
subjects of unrelenting hostilities. 

The government maintained its hold on 
power by filling up the gaping chinks between 
the social strata with German patchwork. 
In quick succession they borrowed the systems 
of labour exchange and old-age pension from 
beyond the Rhine. Haldane even introduced 
some elements of Prussian organisation into 
a bewildered and protesting War Office. 

It was curious to the impartial observer to 
note how much was being borrowed from 
Germany at this time. Doctors borrowed their 
drugs, scholars their texts, labourites their 
doctrines, the cabinet their schemes, church- 
men their higher criticism, and, most unlikely 
of all, Gaelic revivalists obtained their Celtic 
grammars from the same source of since- 
repudiated culture. 

As the fatal hour of destiny drew near, 
shriller grew the cries and more blinded the in- 
fatuation of the politicians. The diplomatists 
prophesied smooth things with exceptions like 
Sir Louis Mallet, and even had they foretold 
dangers nobody at home was in a mood to 
listen. Sir Louis Mallet missed a merited 
position in the Foreign Office because of his 
anti-German tendencies. He was sent to 



200 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

watch the "Great German Myth" in Turkey, 
whence he returned with the melancholy satis- 
faction of having been right. Even the state 
Church reverberated to the Gilbertian atmos- 
phere. The world crisis found Anglicanism 
cloven between the rival claims of the Bishops 
of Uganda and Zanzibar, who had collided in 
the African mission field, as to whether their 
amazed converts were Catholics or Protes- 
tants. If they were Protestants, Dissenters 
could join them at Communion according 
to Uganda. But Zanzibar as a Catholic 
Bishop protested. The Kikuyu question, as it 
was called, was referred to the worthy Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, who decided ex cathedra 
that the Communion of Dissenters was pleas- 
ing to God, but they must not come again ! 
Whereat one archangel retired behind a cloud, 
and two cherubs at least were admonished for 
laughing. 

July, 1914, found political and ecclesiastical 
feud and unrest at summer heat. They were 
hectic and curious days to remember now. 
Days which have seemed since to be further 
removed than the days of George IV, for 
English chronology is now dated ante-bellum 
and post-bellum. An era has passed. The 
days of petty strifes at home were followed 



POST-VICTORIANISM 201 

by the days of universal war abroad. People 
have forgotten the days when high dames left 
the room rather than meet the premier's family 
— the days of the Russian ballet and the tango 
— the days when suffragettes were raided in 
London and guns run to Ireland. The days 
when expectant Liberals awaited "Lang to 
mould the church and Haldane stamp the 
state." 

Society in London danced madly during 
those last months, as society had danced in 
Paris toward the close of the Second Empire. 
The tango was in the ascendant. Sophie 
Chotec (the Archduchess of Austria) had come 
to London to be initiated in its variants. For 
her as for society it was to be a prelude to 
the dance of death. Even her tragic assas- 
sination with her husband in June sounded 
no warning. The whirl of infectious riot con- 
tinued. People dared life and death. A 
wild woman had pulled down the King's 
horse running in the Derby of 1913. A year 
later a young baronet threw himself after mid- 
night from a festive launch into the Thames 
to interest a jaded supper party, and was 
drowned. It seemed as though the exuberance 
of the Irishman who felt "blue-mouldy for 
need of a beating" had seized upon all. Yet 



202 THE END OF A CHAPTER 

in their prophetic souls people felt something, 
some worthy crisis, some invigorating trouble 
was bound to come. Everything pointed at 
one time to civil war in Ireland, and men 
braced themselves for a struggle. Suddenly 
above the cries in the street, above the do- 
mestic brawls, sounded the clear challenge of 
Germany overseas. With no uncertain sound 
the hammer of Thor beat upon the gates of 
Empire ! 

After all that had passed or was passing, 
it was as refreshing as going out after a scrap 
with domestics to listen to the thunderous 
skies gathering for a deluge. In a moment 
of time all the troubles and worries and threat- 
enings of politics became antediluvian, and the 
nation stepped down to do battle with the 
cleansing flood ! 



EPILOGUE 

The ominous calm and the paralysing uncer- 
tainties of July had passed for ever. Few 
troops were seen to move, and no crowds 
swayed through the streets. The symptoms 
without the signs of war marked the first 
days of August. 

But a strange sight met the eyes of those 
whom chance had placed in a position to 
see — men on Irish trawlers gun-running toward 
Ulster — fishermen in smacks off Devon and 
off Grimsby — coast watchers upon the chalky 
headlands — casual holiday-makers on Sussex 
coasts or on Norfolk broads. These men saw 
the wonders of Empire, and the grey smoke 
curling upon the grey horizons, and the grey 
sinewy ships that slipped through daylight 
into dusk — and were no more seen. 

For moments only these shapes were visible 
before they disappeared into the wastes of 
the North Sea. Not a shot was fired, and no 
historic pennant was flown. Like a phantasm 
of clouds they passed on their way, but with 
them rested the keeping of the world. 

The decisive stroke of the war had been 
struck before the war began. Some one had 
mobilised the fleet 

203 



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